After waiting for the monsoon, I got a busy signal

I wrote about the monsoon the other night, and my editor corrected me to say what we experienced Monday wasn’t the “first monsoon” of the year but the “first monsoon storm.”

I thought it would be good to explain that, but I wanted to double-check, even if the information came from an editor. I picked up the phone and called the National Weather Service in Phoenix. And I got … a busy signal. Beep-beep-beep. It took me a few seconds to realize what I was hearing.

Listening to the busy signal, I remembered how when I was 14, a boy I liked had called. My mom left me a message on the kitchen counter. But when I called back, the line was busy. Beepbeep-beep. For hours.

In that time, I imagined he wanted to ask me to the movies, or prom or to get married. I tried again every 10 minutes.

Beep-beep-beep. What if he was the one on the phone, talking to another girl?

The beep-beep-beep on the Weather Service line reminded me of buying tickets for a Rush concert at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in 1984.

Watching from my living room window the night before, the first monsoon storm had felt bigger than me, powerful and timeless. Big storms feel that way.

But little sounds give us the same feeling, powerful and timeless.

I eventually got through to meteorologist Andrew Deemer. My editor was right. The word “monsoon” comes from the Arabic “mausim,” meaning season. Monday’s thunderstorm was just that – a thunderstorm. It’s the change in the weather pattern that is the actual monsoon, Deemer said. We get winds from the southeast through the south, which bring moisture from the Gulf of California. The summer sun heats the moist air, fueling the storms.

It was a warm June night in 1984, when I was in the back of the coliseum, shouting the lyrics to “The Enemy Within.” After an hour of busy signals, I had gotten through and gotten tickets.

Oh, and that boy who called? He just wanted to know the English homework assignment.