The thunder shook the windows and for the first time in more than five weeks, I was homesick.
My grandmother wore a path in the carpet as she paced up and down the hallway muttering about the flowers and the patio furniture and the storm siren and her car windows and the radio station while I layed in bed with the curtains thrown back and the blinds pulled up, watching the storm. It would only be a few minutes before she’d drag me out of bed and into the neighbor’s storm cellar. She is afraid of thunderstorms.
But as lightning lit up the night sky and rain clicked against the windows, I felt myself calmly looking for sleep.
When I was little, my mother used to scoop up my little brother and me and lay on the couch with us by the windows in the living room to watch storms. We’d gasp at the lightning bolts and squeal with excitement when thunder boomed. There on the couch, there wasn’t anything we could possibly be afraid of.
More than a decade older, I scurried down the steps of the top level of a parking garage soaked in heavy rain drops and I stood with Elliott and watched a thunderstorm blow through campus from under the overhang. Out of the rain but close enough to feel the threatening winds, I still gasped in excitement as lightning jumped down from the clouds.
Last night as I gathered up the flashlights and lawn chairs and umbrellas and scurried across the yard after my grandmother who was already yanking up the doors to the storm cellar, I felt a pang of homesickness. I guess I was homesick for the calm excitement that used to arrive with storms.
Here, I just found panic.
