Under the bridge 2

by watarase

Animal Crossing (2001)

Azalea

sonia

Cozy tea. 🎃

'Hachinohe-Same' (1933) by Kawase Hasui (Japanese, 1883–1957).

Published by Watanabe Shôzaburô.

Woodblock print.

Image and text information courtesy MFA Boston.

Rain 🌧️

Spring Rain in the forest

I miss storms.

Growing up in the Midwest, I was scared of them. Tornado drills in school from a young age brought home the fact that one of these destructive maelstroms could come through and wipe an entire town off the map in minutes. Twister came out when I was in high school, fueling both fascination and fear when we watched it in a science class so we could pick apart the fact and fiction. And I was terrified of getting caught out in one if I had walked too far from home, and up from the southwest came dark clouds, wind, and a growl of thunder in the distance. Yet I also felt security as the winds blew around the house, tucked into my bed in the dark; so long as a tornado didn't snake down from the sky, I could rest amid the thunder and lightning, watching the trees blown back and forth by the wind.

But when I moved to the Pacific Northwest in 2006, I found after a few years that I began to miss them. It wasn't just that their relative infrequency had defanged them. Rather, I found that the part of me that curled up while the wind howled and the sky rumbled missed the feeling of safety amid the chaos. Sure, there was always the chance that factors would align to bring a powerful spiraling juggernaut racing across the land, but the vast majority of the time things passed without incident, other than perhaps a few small branches and leaves washed into the storm drain by a sudden torrent.

The few true thunderstorms that raged when I lived in Portland, and then on the coast, became special occasions. Unless I was absolutely uninterruptible, I would stop whatever I was doing, turn off the lights if it was dark, and bear silent witness to the passing of the flashes of light and their resultant chorus. Sometimes there would be no more than one or two distant disturbances to the south or the north; other times we would get a few minutes that almost--but not quite--felt like being back in the Ozarks on a muggy summer evening. These times became so special to me that if my partner were awake later than I was as was often the case, and a storm rolled in, he would gently wake me and sit with me while we enjoyed the show together, before I drifted back to sleep.

So now that I come back here a couple of times a year, I always hope that there will be a storm or two. And as I write this, the southern edge of a storm brushes past Rolla, following I-44 toward St. Louis. It's not an especially wild beast here; the leaves barely move, the rain drops sluggishly, and the thunder only occasionally speaks a ways away. But I am curled up in my old bedroom, blinds open to watch the lightning flash, listening to spatters against the windows.