Thunderstorms

Bravewriter's freewrite friday: How do I feel during a thunderstorm......?

I delayed writing this one on Friday. I had a hunch that it was not a fiction exercise and it had been so long since I had been awake during a thunderstorm that I wanted to save the freewrite for a chance to write it out of the present. It worked like a charm. We finally got the rain we needed.

In "A Farewell to Arms" by Earnest Hemmingway there is a scene, a love scene, that involves the rain. I read that and it was the beginning of my love affair with thunderstorms and the written emotion of narrative. I would take virus luring walks in the cold rains that fell in Eastern Illinois where we lived, walk down to the river and watch the horizon of storms in the sky and water. Yes, I was dramatic. Across the river was an old insane assylum where the movie Child's Play was filmed (it was used as the set of the apartment building, Go Chucky!). It was a tall spired gothic structure, very church like.

Whenever I was feeling broken hearted teen angst I would walk out there in the rain. Thunderstorms made me feel that way, reminded me of turmoil. Then I grew up.

As an young newly wed/college student, I studied weather patterns. I was not a storm chaser, but I loved to track the radar online and then sit out on the open porch and drink hot tea when the storms would roll in. I still felt artistic inside when they would fill the sky. Then what is called a microburst dropped a steel door out of the sky onto my first new to me used car and bent the only tree on our small property in half. Dropped an old oak tree down the middle of a neighbors house and then blew back up into the sky. So, you see, a smashed car and mangled ten year old pin oak were nothing compared to our neighbor's loss, but still.

Last night my daughter slept though the night for the first time in her life. No requests for water, no midnight pee runs, no nightmares. She's almost three. How did I know she didn't wake up? I was right there watching her, worrying why? Seriously, this kid wakes up every 3 hours and has since before she was born. WHY IS SHE STILL ALSLEEP? Poke poke poke. Nothing. (She tossed and turned a bit, but did not wake up until 7:30 AM.)

Around 3:30 AM the storms rolled in. Lil'Bug's room has the south wall, nothing but windows, five of them, one is a big picture window. The storms were frightful and terrible and beautiful. Loud and bright. I just lay awake and tried to relax. I finally fell asleep around 4:40 AM. I fell asleep thinking about how my little girl's lavender purple room with the five windows is a perfect princess room, the kind of room I always wanted her to have and I am a little sad we are moving.

So, maybe I have not outgrown the angst after all.