surfing: brand x

1999 august 04

thunder and lightning

we had a most excellent thunder and lightning storm yesterday afternoon and evening.

i remember telling you once how much i used to love sitting on the front porch with my dad when i was a little girl, watching the summer storms. well, it is pretty cool to hang with him on the back porch and watch summer storms as an adult, too.

the lightning bolts were beautifully defined, clear streaks of brilliant white against a dark sky, and the thunder of the sort that rolls on and on and on for what seems like an hour. peter parker wasn't all that impressed, choosing to hide under the dining room table through most of it, but i was.

just like when i was a child, i watched the flash and then counted one-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand until i heard the rumble. "three miles away, dad." i still get delicious chills when i can calculate it moving towards me from six miles to fivefourthreetwo, one. i've never seen lightning strike closeup, but i live in the hopes i will someday. of course with my luck, it will just strike me instead of the tree across the lawn so i may want to be careful for what i wish.

my grandfather used to tell me that thunder was a giant bag of potatoes rolling down the hill in heaven; god toted them around in a wheelbarrow and once in a while he got a bit clumsy. i thought this a little odd, mostly that god would be manhandling his own wheelbarrow when he had a perfectly good legion of angels to do the dirty work, but i liked the story. and i built on it in my little mind: the rain was god watering the potatoes that were still in the ground, the lightning was the root of the potato filling with water. yes, i realize that the potato itself is the root but i was only six at the time, i thought all roots were long and skinny.

the only bad thing about the storm were the brief power outages that hit all night long. i don't mind if it goes out completely but that whole onoffonoffonoff thing was getting on my nerves. it is still flickering a bit this morning so i better send this off while i still can.

electrifying, as usual, claire

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