About every big change in my life has had a storm mixed up with it, comin' at the time it happened or just afore or just after.

I was born, so my mother used to tell me, on a stormy night about like this one.

And it poured great guns the day I was married.

And Eben, my husband, went down with his vessel in a hurricane off Hatteras.

And when poor Jedediah run off to go gold-diggin' there was such a snowstorm the next day that I expected to see him plowin' his way home again.