Wednesday afternoon, a quick storm rolled through town. The weather here is mild yet fierce, a strange dichotomy of opposites. It swoops in off the mountains quickly and leaves just the same. There are times when it will be raining while the sun is still shining. It perplexes the Midwestern Farm Girl in me who grew up where the storms were almost always accompanied by blackened skies.
Here, a shining sun is no guarantee it won’t rain, or the storm can smother the sun before it hits. You never really know what you’re going to get. Sometimes we have a warning, when we can see the storm swallow the mountains as it heads this way, and sometimes we’re too busy to pay attention.
Wednesday’s storm took us by surprise. The skies actually clouded over, and the thunder was so loud and rolling that Claire ran to me and huddled in my arms.
“Momma! I’m scared!” she said, as she buried her face in my neck.
“It’s okay,” I said, rubbing her back. “It’s just thunder.”
“I’m scared!” she cried. “The thunder is going to get me!”
“No, the thunder can’t hurt you,” I said, opting not to explain how dangerous lightening was. We can save that discussion for another time. “It’s just a sound, and sounds can’t hurt you…even if they’re scary. It’s kinda like when someone says, ‘BOO!’” I said, as I tickled her.
She laughed, her mind somewhat taken off of the scary thunder.
“See? It’s scary, but it won’t hurt you.”
“Like this? …BOO!” she said with a smile, trying to scare me. I responded with a startled look and appropriately exaggerated gasp.
“Exactly! That was scary, but it didn’t hurt.”
“I wish the thunder would go away, Momma…and stop trying to scare me. I wish it would say, ‘BOO!’ somewhere else.”
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That is so sweet!
Funny, I would love it to thunder here!