The storm, when it comes, is satisfying. Loud. Pounding. Blowing. Rumbling. I used to be so afraid of thunder. My mother told me it was just “the angels bowling.” Even at 6 I knew that was a load but I did wonder if the angels wore bowling shirts like my dad did every Wednesday and how did they choose a captain, since they were all presumably "good" and how did the balls not fall through the clouds for surely there weren’t bowling ALLEYS in heaven ?...and this was enough to distract me from the terrifying cracks and shakes of nature in the sky.
And now they fascinate and entrance me, these storms. You can see them coming from miles away...there is no way this storm is NOT happening. Mother Nature has declared that this humidity has got to GO and she is preparing you for it. It’s like being at a show, in the theater. You sit in your seat…. waiting, anticipating...it’s about to start, any minute now. The orchestra starts warming up. There is a silence- just a moment of it- before they launch into the overture and then it all starts.
And I’m sitting here, entranced by a summer storm because I watched it roll in, listened to the wind blow, felt it stop for just a moment and then one drop….two drops….a hundred drops all at once. Mother Nature is goddamned tired of the humidity and call it what you want, bowling angels or hot air awkwardly introducing itself to cold and creating a disturbed atmosphere, it is making enough noise to shake the house and make the dog yelp.
There is beauty in this fury. And the pictures you snap cannot capture the pixellated pointillism of a summer storm, but a summer storm waits for no one. It rumbles on...the angels taking their game elsewhere, the rain off to fight with the lake. Mother Nature, comfortable once more.
