Musing 4 July or the smell of rain and wind

As I write this I'm watching gusts of wind move the wind-soaked branches back and forth. Even in the dim stormlight (not counting the flashes of lightning) the leaves glisten. 

I love storms, though I didn't always. When I was a young child they terrified me. I was maybe seven years old when my father found me crying in a closet during a storm. He picked me up and rocked me, saying "There's nothing to be afraid of. You're safe. Look, it's beautiful." He stood by the window and held me as the storm raged on; as my tears slowed down, unable to withstand my curiosity; as he taught me to count the time between flash and boom. Given the storms that would later rage between us, this memory is a tender gift.

When I was a teen I took to joining my mother during storms, out on the porch of our ramshackle Victorian twin. She loved the moments before the storm, I loved the storm itself. Now I love both. The way the world darkens and waits, the changes in the scent of the wind, the smell of rain on soil or hot sidewalk. I love it all.

I moved to Kansas City in my mid-forties and storms took on new meaning. They were bigger, louder, and much more threatening since they could hold a tornado in their hidden hearts. In my time there I saw only two actual tornados (though I was quite near one of them) and perhaps a third swept over my home not long before I moved to Minnesota. 

When I first moved to Missouri, I didn't know how to feel about the storms. I remember during the first bad summer storm, I called my friend Philip and asked what I should do. He told me, "Take a blanket and all of your pillows and go into the most protected part of the house. Maybe the basement or a bathtub. You can safely wait out the storm there. Or, once you're really a midwesterner, you'll go on the porch to watch."

That first storm I stayed inside. By the last, the one when the wind was moving horizontally and I could hear the freight train above, I stayed on the porch and watched. I still do.

I suppose there is a metaphor in all of these for facing storms in life. I'll let you suss it out. For now, I'm going back outside to feel the wind, smell the rain, and applaud each flash of lightning.

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