It is currently 9 p.m. on a Wednesday night and I’m sitting on my porch with the glow of my laptop screen illuminating the words I am typing. It’s raining. I take a deep inhale of breath, and start humming, because T. Swift was correct when she sang “There’s somethin’ bout the way. The street looks when it’s just rained. There’s a glow off the pavement” in her song, Fearless.
There really is something about the smell of rain. And the feel of it.
Rain helps bring forth life. It brings a sense of renewal to our souls. Or at least it does for me.
One of my favorite memories growing up is sitting on our front porch with my dad watching a thunder storm roll in across the open country skies. They would go from a pale blue sunset to dark gray to black in the matter of an hour.
My dad and I would sit on the two forrest green chairs (him in the rocker, me in the high backed stationary) and just watch the lighting and then count how many seconds it would take for the thunder to roar its loudest. This was all done quietly, in our own minds. My dad and I’s relationship isn’t built on words shared or conversations. My dad and my relationship is built on moments shared. Riding along country backroads in his big red truck, side by side on bicycles, and sitting on porches where the only sound we hear is the rain drops hitting the pavement.
Thunder storms, even severe ones, never make me nervous but before you go and call me brave you should know something. I would always (and still do) chicken out when the tornado siren would ring out.
There is just something about watching the movie Twister at the age of 8 that will forever leave a scar of fear on one’s heart. At least it did for mine. (I should probably mention I watched it without my parent’s permission, at a friend’s, something I truly regret ever saying “yes” to.)
Ever since that dreadful day, sirens bringing forth tornado warnings and watches will forever terrify me. I’m better now, almost 20 years later, but I still get a ping in my gut before I can talk myself out of the fear. A lump grows in my heart before I even realize what is happening.
I can remember one time, on a night just like tonight, my dad and I watched the rain pick up its cadence and the wind began to blow my long hair everywhere, covering my face. After an enormous flash of lighting and a large crack of thunder, as though cued by a conductor conducting an orchestra, we heard it. The high pitched sound of our county’s tornado siren. Instantly, I ran inside and headed to my parent’s bedroom, throwing the covers over me, praying silently I wouldn’t die.
I recited this plea over and over and over in my head, hugging my Raggedy Ann doll for dear life. I was too busy crying in my dad’s pillow to notice that he had come in to sit beside me. He didn’t announce his presence, he didn’t make any sudden movements but just sat beside me while I drowned his pillow with my quiet tears.
