Father Sky Grumbles
The weather is changing. I know when the weather is going to change because of the pressure I feel in my sinuses. It feels like a full on sinus headache and that someone has my head in a vise. My second clue was the tapping of the rain drops on my window.
It is during a thunderstorm that I am reminded that we are not so separated from nature’s violence. Plus when I see the lightning and hear the rumbles, I am thrown back into my childhood when I would watch the lightning and count the minutes before I heard the thunder.
A thousand one, a thousand two, a thousand three. Each second represented a mile.
The storm cell was 9 miles, then 5 miles, then overhead. The last lightning strike was close enough that I could hear a crack the same time that I saw the lightning.
Sometimes I find storms invigorating. The rain slapping my face and the wind blowing my hair makes me want to run. It is the lightning that gives me pause.
When I was a teenager, my mother drove us home through a lightning storm. Boom. Boom. Boom. The lightning struck the fields less than a hundred feet from the car. We screamed and my mother had that fiendish look on her face of defiance. She loved it. Deep down it was scarier than sitting in theater watching a slasher movie. To be honest I hate slasher movies.
She told us that the lightning was fertilizing the fields. It was lucky because the alfalfa crops would be greener and lusher. Then she would tell us that our grandfather, her absent father, had been struck by lightning two times. How could anyone survive that?
When I was older, a man in our area was struck by a single lightning bolt that was generated by a little cloud in a mainly clear sky. He died immediately. It’s not so uncommon. I’ve heard of people being struck by lightning on the beach by one little cloud. My late hubby and I were always careful to get out of the water when we saw clouds.
The closest I have ever gotten to lightning was when I was in my early 20s in Salt Lake City, Utah. I had this belt made with metal links that I liked to wear. It made me look slightly edgy. I was running from the rain and as I reached for the metal door handle I heard the crack of lightning. Lucky for me it wasn’t a direct strike, but I felt the buzz in my hands and my belt. I never wore that belt again.
The strike was so close and so loud that I couldn’t hear for a few minutes. I could have died. It was so close. I lost a piece of my invincibility.
Nowadays, I am more cautious. I watch and count. I am grateful when the storm cell floats away to strike somewhere else.
Nature is not a tame beast.