Summer Storms

The last few days have been hot... so hot that any bit of clothing feels too heavy and restricting, but alas a city dweller does not easily enjoy the cool refreshment of the wind on unclothed skin. Nudity is one more mountain luxury I miss here. I love the summer, born on the solstice actually, but this dry heat is enough to make anyone go mad.

I set up the kids pool in the backyard, thigh high and twelve feet around, does the trick in a splash but hardly as satisfying as an unfettered frolic in the swimming hole, or a slip down the Camelsfoot black-plastic water slide. The sweetness of hot summers in the mountains has tainted me forever I fear... The sweltering blacktop running every which way, flanked by giant towers of concrete and heavily fuming trucks (almost everyone has a truck in interior B.C., even the guys in the cities), make the summer in the city as appealing as taking a bath in McDeath's old used cooking oil.

There may be some relief in sight though... dark, heavy clouds have been slowly gathering and I wait with devilish delight for the first moist drops to fall. My childhood was filled with summer thunderstorms. The hottest, muggiest days in southern ontario would almost surely produce a drenching downpour complete with lightening and thunder that night. I remember my mother loved these storms, her eyes would just light up and she would stand by the screen door letting the spray hit her as she watched the lightening streak bluish light across the hills.

I was always terrified of the thunder, and afraid that the lightening would hit the house or a tree nearby. If I watched it was always from inside the crook of her arm. The strange thing was that the power would eventually go out, and I would volunteer to go through the house lighting the emergency candles we had stashed all throughout for this very purpose. Even though I was totally terrified, I would take my one candle and walk through the dark house, bringing light with me. It was like my right of passage, overcoming my fear to show myself there was nothing to fear. A few years later when talking about this with a boyfriend he asked my why I would volunteer when I was so afraid, I could not give him an answer because I did not know what my reasoning was, only that I did not want to be afraid.

That seems to be a constant theme in my life. I do not want to be afraid and so I challenge myself to face my fear, and overcome it. If something seems to be reluctant in me, or I am afraid, it only makes me want to explore the reason for my fear, which often means doing the thing I am afraid of. Do not confuse this with recklessness for I am not much interested in doing things that have a better chance of failing or killing me, then succeeding. I mean seeing something that you must do, but are afraid to, and so doing it anyway. I wish to never be a victim and always be the warrior... well, the warrior princess anyway.

The thunderstorms in my life have been frightful things, filled with mystery and darkness intermittent with brilliant flashes of light like insight to a hungry mind. With these storms has always come the rain; cooling, releasing, replenishing water of life.

The day after a thunderstorm has always been my favorite, to walk barefoot in the wet grass and breath in deeply the smell of ozone and wet earth. It has always smelled like healing to me, like victory.