And yet again.... until 5 a.m.

Lightning photographed by EMA Volunteer Charlie Heflin. Charlie photographed these lightning bolts while performing storm spotter duties during an activation for a tornado watch.
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Well, another rumbling in the western skies tonight as the forecast looms ahead for tornado watch until five a.m. I can't begin to count how many nights have been like this during our spring and early summer. So many of our sister counties and towns have been hit, lives lost... property damaged. It is so sad... and frankly a bit scary as well. I am a lover of weather, and I have been since my childhood. I remember the days when I was afraid of storms, but that soon passed as I saw raw excitement in the splashes of thunder, blasts of wind.... days of ice and snow.... I love weather... I know... one of these days weather will damage or claim something or someone I adore and I will regret loving its wild, untamed heat and heart. I don't like damage or danger. I just like the play of light and dark clouds, the noise outside... the absence of heat and bright glary sunshine.

So Missouri has suited me just fine lately. My idea of a perfect night is a snowy one with all loved ones of me and of all of you tucked in safely and warm.... no school the next day and a blanket of snow drifting deep and velvet blue against the fences. Barring that in the middle of June, I will go for a rainy morning, dark and rumbly.... and a house brimming with smells of cooking and company on the way to enjoy a cozy brunch... Bright flowers checkering the tablecloth and maybe a quick nap in the recliner before they get there.

On the June I turned ten years old my mother requested one thing for our mutual birthdays. She asked ever so sweetly for my father to tear down the little white outhouse at the edge of our lawn. He liked it for storing garden things and didn't really want it torn down. They just had a big difference of opinion, and she maintained she wanted nothing else for her birthday. I remember thinking that was such a dumb thing to want for a birthday, but I think I was basically neutral on the whole controversy. On June 28th the wind and storms set in and we experienced a long night sitting in our kind of dampish basement on makeshift benches made from boards laid over ten gallon stoneware pickle crocks.. (yep. we sat on them!!!! Blue salt crocks!!!! oh, yeah). We could see the lightning through the tiny window high above our heads (you ALL know those little basement windows with the window wells outside???) and we heard the trees crashing branches down, splitting and swaying as hot wind cooked the countryside. Our dog was in his house, and my mother was petrified. Daddy was standing on a little radio box and peering out the window when he turned to Mom and announced she had her birthday! It had turned midnight, and the electricity long gone was suddenly present in its raw form... A bolt of lightning in the eastern sky illuminated a blank fence row... Our toity house had blown down... Happy Birthday, Mom! Daddy was thrilled with the timing, and Mom got her way... just not in the way she was hoping...