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Thunder and Lightning, Very, Very Frightening
December 12, 2003, 5:45 p.m. I was awoken this morning, at five past six, by a crack of thunder. It was very strange, as the sun was up, shining white behind the omnipresent cloud cover, and I’m not one to associate thunder with daylight. Thunder should be at night, in blackness rent by lightning, or at the very least in an afternoon darkened by incoming clouds with green-grey bellies. There was a lightning streak across the sky as I caught my bus this morning. Thunder has been bellowing all day, intermittently, and the rain has been falling with the same irregularity. We just had a tremendous thunderclap, followed by a very cinematic downpour of rain. My puppy barked bravely at it, telling the storm to sod off, but I can tell she’s really scared. I am more concerned about the fact that I have a picnic to go to on Sunday. A prayer to the Weather Gods – please put on your Sunday best at the appropriate time. Thank you! I remember being deathly afraid of thunderstorms as a child. I’m not quite sure what I expected to happen, but no doubt it was a mix of things: high winds knocking trees onto the house, crushing me; heavy rains flooding the house, drowning me; lightning striking the house, electrocuting me. I remember my father holding me one night, standing outside with the rain falling around me. He sang me the alphabet to calm me down, and then told me God was having a party, playing his drums too loudly. I love thunderstorms now, I love the sound of thunder. Something so booming, so sonorous, but so loud at the same time. I can’t quite explain it . . . it’s a sound that doesn’t seem to have a source, it’s just the air around me that reverberates with it. It’s such a potent sound, so full of power . . . I think perhaps such descriptions are better left to more accomplished writers than I.
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