Summer and Son

I wrote a longer version of this in 2007, when my son was six.  I've tweaked it today.  Maybe by posting this I can bring the rains:

A thunderhead climbs over a distant mountain. It is just after the Fourth of July in the North and the humidity has been bearing down on us like hot soup.  It’s been a week of this; the weather makes work hard, bugs bold, grass grow, sleep hide.  The thunderhead signals the end of the heat.  My son and I watch it from behind the house. The cloud stands thousands of feet above everything: us, the house, the fields, the mountain. Its top flattens into a monstrous anvil. The storm dwarfs the mountain and comes closer visibly.  It is faster than a tide, exciting; we will wait for it to arrive.

My little boy is thrilled by these storms. They pass over the landscape and change everything while they are here. During one storm we sat out on the covered porch and let the rain cool us and we listened to the pounding fist-sized droplets of water and the bounding thunder. Today my son and I lie in the grass behind the house, his head across my belly, me leaning back on my arms.

The storm is closer now. The hot air is stirring a bit and the birds are quiet. My son and I can no longer see all of the cloud; its crown is out of sight, its belly is a dark blue and black and gray. My son is excited and worried. It is a big storm. We move to the covered porch, he cradles in my arms and we just sit.  I am daydreaming, he is chatting about nothing and everything at once. 

The storm is now approaching, shuddering the ground with rolls of thunder, pushing languid, thick air out of its way. We watch the thick, quick flashes of light eagerly and begin a count. "One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three, Mississippi ..." We time the roars of thunder, establishing the pace of the storm. Soon it will be on us directly.

We pull the chairs to the edge of the porch. The world goes deeply dark. We listen to individual raindrops strike leaves, the roof, the ground. The wind picks up. And now the rain comes in sheets. We are electric.  We are observant.  We are thrilled.

As we sit facing east, watching the storm roil everything around us, from behind us, from the west, the sun drops below the cloud line, casting a dry light into the storm. The torrent of rain turns into a strobe of individual drops of water. It is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.  It is magical.  And now a rainbow the size of the sky arches across the horizon along the ridge across our valley.

My son's eyes widen. A magnificent grin splays across his face. He leans forward out of the chair.

Ah.  Summer.

(c) 2010 David Rocchio