I checked the weather forecast like I do pretty much everyday. I’m not sure why. It’s late August and we’ve been dealing with a horrible heat wave. Yes, we’re used to heat in central Texas which means if I’m talking about it, it’s that Hades kind of torment, day after day of triple digits for weeks on end. I guess the checking the forecast is hope of seeing the highs drop below 100. That would be nice. Really nice.
I think the feeling is worse right now because we have been dealing with covid-19 in central Texas for five months. I’m tired of masks and social distance and stories of corpses stacked in refrigerated trucks because there is no room in the morgues and people insisting they have the right to infect as many people as they want. I’m exhausted by every ugly detail of my country that has surfaced since covid-19 started sweeping the nation earlier this year. I’m both devastated by the public videos of police officers killing Black people and encouraged that so many white people have joined the efforts to bring social justice to Blacks and other marginalized Americans. I’m disillusioned and frightened by the dismantling of the institutions of our democracy. And to top it all off, the natural world is kicking us while we’re down. As if the derechos (winds) destroying parts of Iowa and extreme wildfires all over California were not enough, we’re now watching a pair of hurricanes enter the Gulf of Mexico and head toward Louisiana and Texas.
With all that in mind, I checked three different weather sources and they all said the same thing. More triple digits. More sun. More of the same never ending heat.
That’s what made the following morning so strange. Thunder woke me from sleep before sunrise. Lightning broke through my closed curtains and blinds. Rain fell hard against the roof overhead and the ground outside my bedroom window. So unexpected it disoriented my sleepy brain.
It was like waking up to a dream. Only I remembered I was already living in a dream. A dreamlike world of covid, and racial strife, and unspeakable acts against Central Americans desperately trying to find safety, and duo hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, and intense wild fires, and Russia choosing our president and our president acting like an authoritarian Russian and more shocking news everyday.
I got up and threw open the windows to find mixed into the thunder and lightning and sheets of rain was refreshing cool air. After weeks of 100+ temperatures, when I didn’t think I could take anymore of the madness in the world, a storm. Surprising. Invigorating. Arroyos and creeks would run fast today, awakened with the showers.
Thank you, Divine Creator, for this gorgeous gift.
I can keep going. I will continue the life you so generously gave me. For a short while, a beautiful storm was exactly what I needed to cleanse the pain and fear and anger and leave me refreshed. It would be several hours after the storm pushed through before the heat would drive me to close the house up and turn on the air conditioner again. Still, the memory lingers and soothes.
I can’t see what’s coming. I can persevere.
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