The leaves will bow down

I love a good thunderstorm. It's a love that was fostered by my dad when I was a small child. He would set me on his lap on the front porch of the old farmhouse. There were two huge maples, probably more than a hundred years old, in the front yard not twenty feet from the house. I remember squealing with fear and delight when an ear-splitting crack of thunder and the following lightning would be so close you could almost feel the electrical charge and smell the sulphur in the air. Daddy would hold me tight and tell me to not be afraid...that it was only noise.

One day we were enjoying the unleashed forces, when the inevitable happened. The maple tree to the left of us was struck by a huge bolt of lightning and crrrrackkkk half of the tree was gone...split right down the middle. Lucky for us, the falling half of the tree fell away from the house. Daddy rushed inside with me, fearful that the rest of it could go any second. It didn't and all was well, except for a power outage that seemed to last for days in a little girl's mind, but in reality was probably only five or six hours. Daddy cut down the rest of the tree, and that was the last time we sat on the porch to watch a storm. Oh, we still liked watching them, but from the relative safety through the window.

When my children were little, we would kneel on the couch in front of the big windows and watch the trees thrash and the rain blow hard against the panes. Hail always made it extra exciting. They never feared storms and always looked forward to the show. If the power went out (which it often did because our electricity was from a rural co-op), we played word games and read by candlelight. One of my favorite games was to name all the states and their capitols. I'm still pretty good at it.

I can think of only two times when I was really frightened by a storm. The first was when Aimee and I were home alone and a storm came up that was so fast and furious, it made me a little nervous. When lightning struck the deck after a thunderclap so loud it hurt our ears, we both clung to each other until it was over. That storm gave me a lot more respect for them, especially as a mother protecting her children.

The second time was on our famous trip out west in the camper. We were camping in a private campground on the edge of Glacier National Park. In the summer, the sun doesn't set until ten or later. After supper, David wanted to take another short hike, but I was pooped and decided to stay in camp. He took the kids and was gone and gone and gone some more. You are warned when you're in the mountains that storms can come up very quickly and it can get freezing cold just as quickly, but when they left, the sky had been completely clear with no sign of impending weather and they hadn't taken any rain gear or jackets to keep warm.

Of course, a vicious thunderstorm blew up around 9:00. I was huddled in the camper, hoping for a sign that they had arrived safely back at the site. At ten o'clock, the storm had blown over, but they still weren't back and it was nearly dark and I was getting hysterical, so I headed to the camp office to have them call a park ranger to get a search party together. About the time the campground manager located the ranger and was explaining the details, I saw our mini-van come rolling into the parking lot. I didn't know whether to cry with relief or to give David a good tongue lashing about endangering the kids' lives and his own. I think I did both. He explained that it hadn't even rained where they were and had no idea I would be so worried. This was long before cell phones, and they probably wouldn't have worked there, if we had owned one.

We could use a good thunderstorm in our area. The weather has been nearly unbearable and everything is drying up. We did get a little break when one danced all around us a couple of days ago which made it a little cooler. We heard some thunder off in the distance, but we only got a quarter-inch of rain and I'm having to water the garden. So, hats off to thunderstorms...may they bring you entertainment, relief from the heat and a thirst-quenching rain, but not any harm to you and your loved ones.

This song reminds me of my dad and me.

http://new.music.yahoo.com/peter-paul-mary/tracks/for-baby-for-bobbie--23428798