He'd be racing from farmhouse to farmhouse, helping the farmers file their claims. Before I was ten, I knew how to read a disaster, how to calculate the loss of life and limb. And I'd learned a few things about odds. Actuarial statistics were the subject of family dinners. The death of a child wasn't worth a fraction of the death of a working spouse.
Property costs more than grief.
Dollar signs lurked behind every heartbreak. Over dinner I heard tales of farms foreclosed, policies lapsed. From an early age I came to associate my father with bad weather. I can't say I've ever gotten over it completely. When thick black clouds gather over the Pacific, I have to brace myself.