I’m not sure what it is about electrical storms that I find so engaging. There is something mysterious and powerful about watching jagged bolts of lightning rip open the night sky; something both intriguing and humbling. My oldest son is afraid of the thunder, as many children are. Strangely, I have never been afraid of storms. In fact, I have always been inexplicably drawn to them. I can remember as a small child making the midnight walk to the large plate glass window in the dining room of the home I grew up in to get a better view of the tempest outside. Sometimes, in later years, I would sit there at the table for hours, watching the rain pound off of the rooftops across the street and turn the gutters into a muddy torrent. As chaotic as a storm usually is, there was a peacefulness to them that I simply cannot explain.
That feeling has followed me for years. I have written about it before and have never been able to capture even a small part of what it actually feels like, and I won’t even attempt to do so now. I guess it may seem strange to some to have such an attraction, or even attachment, to a meteorological phenomenon. I would explain it if I could.
Tonight there is a colossal electrical storm going on right outside my hotel window. More lightning that I have seen in a long time. So what am I doing? Sitting at this computer, two floors from the top of what it the tallest building for miles. Darwinism anyone? Still, I couldn’t help but write something down, because that’s what you do when something inspires you and what is happening outside is nothing if not inspiring. For some reason, it makes me feel closer to home. Watching the violence of nature’s rage makes me think of my family, safe at home in our tiny house where my boys are asleep with their stuffed animals and glowing mobile of the solar system, and my daughter is sacked out, snoring, with her feet up on the wall beside her and her sippy cup full of warm milk from bedtime still clutched in one hand. Where the sounds of the city at night have faded to an indistinct murmur outside the window of the bedroom where my wife sleeps; exhausted, but happy that I am coming home to her tomorrow. Lightning or not, it’s the same sky out there watching over all of us.
Being in such a large building, I can’t really hear the rain even though it is pouring. Rainy nights seem somehow calmer; maybe even softer. I hope it is still raining tomorrow when I wake up.
