Dr. Jo Harding
On occasion, I awake from a deep sleep to vivid memories of an old friend. It’s actually a very impressing phenomenon: my mind will have, essentially, collected “footage” that I’d long since misplaced and compiled it as a sort of short tribute to the person occupying my thoughts. And when I indulge these memories, the entirety of what I’ve known and experienced of that person returns to the fore of my mind, flooding it with the sound of their laughter, the measure of compassion in their eyes, the hue of their skin, their pains, their triumphs. This morning I awoke and, in the way that I’ve just described, reminisced about Dr. Jo Harding.
I met Jo either by coincidence or divine intervention. We were sitting at the bar of a small pub in Aurora, Nebraska – about twenty miles east of Grand Island – and she noticed even before I did that I was mouthing along with Waylon Jennings’ Green River. I was embarrassed and she was beautiful.
Sometimes you just feel comfortable in the company of a stranger, and that evening we both did. I told her some about my recent experience with heartbreak and she listened with a motherly lack of condescension; it was a comfort that I don’t have words for. And there was a freedom to be honest and vulnerable, thinking that we wouldn’t see each other again, so she told me all about her then impending divorce with her husband Bill and the contradicting thoughts and feelings that came along with it.
Without any formal planning we met each other at that pub for the next three nights – it was an unspoken understanding – and we spent those nights in constant conversation. It wasn’t long before she told me that she was a professional storm chaser, and right then I remember thinking that there was nowhere in the world I’d rather be then sitting on that barstool beside Jo. I had hundreds of questions, and she was excited to answer them. She told me about DOROTHY, an advanced tracking system she had created using wireless sensor technology, which she hoped would serve to gather information from within a twister and help with storm prediction. To be honest, I was skeptical, but that was before I really got to know Jo. She had questions for me, too, but what I remember clearest is how much I loved to just listen to her speak. Interspersed between her answers were stories of close calls and awe-inspiring moments that held my attention for hours on end, those were some of the most honest and interesting conversations I’ve ever had.
Things continued this way until Tornado season was at hand and Jo was out in the field constantly, most of the time driving back and forth between South Dakota and Oklahoma. DOROTHY was so delicate and unpredictable that launching it successfully required her setting up shop directly in the path of ten or twelve F4 and F5 storms, I’m truly amazed that she didn’t get herself killed in the process.
My stay in Nebraska had run it’s course and I was within days of heading back to Canada when she called, elated, to tell me about her success in Oklahoma, which was inseparable from the news that she was back with Bill. I could never hold anything against him, first because he makes Jo happy, and second, because she and I were never more than friends; but I knew at that time that the nights we’d shared in bars and the day-long drives we’d taken through the Mid-West weren’t possible any more. So, after an awkward introduction to Bill and one last celebratory night at that pub in Aurora, I said my goodbyes and headed west on Interstate 80.
It’s hard to describe how I felt as I drove alone straight across Iowa and into Illinois, but I know that I’ll forever associate images of driving through cornfields with a feeling of melancholy. Leaving that relationship behind felt like losing something without knowing what it was, I guess I needed that time to let my thoughts and emotions settle.
Though the majority of our friendship is rooted in those three very concentrated months, we still write from time to time; what I have loved the most is that we were an odd couple right from the start. There are twenty years between us, many experiences unshared and not fully comprehended, but somehow a common ground that runs as deep as the understanding that she and I are living and breathing on God’s green earth in the same moment. For those three months, it was a relationship that you’re not “supposed” to have – that’s why we loved it.
