The kids are finally quiet. Just five days into summer vacation and I've already begun to cherish each rare moment of peace and solitude. Breathing thanks to the goddess of maternal sanity, I grab my paperback and disappear into my room. While I'm hoping for an hour of freedom, chances are I'll be lucky to get even two whole minutes alone.
I have only twenty or so pages left to read. Usually this makes me read faster and faster until I finish. Being an avid reader and a confirmed bookaholic, I usually sink into the pages and disappear from the real world. Today, I keep getting distracted and losing my place.
Pulsing flashes keep darting across the floor and up the walls. Each flash is quickly followed by powerful rumbles and booms that pound the air. Finally, I give up and stand by the window to watch the storm rage.
Energy runs rampant through the skies. Jagged bolts of lightning skip here and there, playing tag with rolling thunder. The wind dances around the houses, tossing every loose item in the area into the air, then dropping them forgotten as it races to the treetops and laughs with the thunder.
Vivid fingers point everywhere in double-time flash and fade.
"Look!" they seem to blurt. "Look here!" Then, in an instant, the fingers are clear across the valley, pointing in laughter at spinning dust devils. Suddenly they are right overhead, pointing down at me as though trying to reveal my hiding place to my restless, housebound children.
Flinching back behind the curtains, I notice a strange noise that quickly grows louder. A riot of voices rushes towards me, growling and laughing and singing. Cautiously, I peer outside but can't see anything unusual. Then I realize what it is. I can hear the rain falling from far above before it even hits the ground.
Then the rain splashes to earth and the sound changes. There's no pattern or rhythm, just countless different sounds made by a legion of raindrops that sing and dance as they land. They make a wild, beautiful music that holds me spellbound while the lightning bounces across the sky and the thunder follows at its heels..
A sudden flash right above my house sends my senses reeling in shock.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"Wow! That was close!" my brother yelps while I make faces at him from behind Mom's back. I have to set the table and he's just being a lazy bum over by the kitchen door. If I know him, he'll figure some way to get out of helping with the dishes after supper, too. Crossing my eyes and sticking my tongue out as far as I can, I rearrange my face, trying to gross him out.
"Tara!" Mom raps out. "That's enough! Finish the table," she says in her don't-mess-with-me-now voice. I glare at Mitch and catch him grinning and gloating. Of course, Mom doesn't catch him!
"Brothers! What good are they?" I wonder for the zillionth time as deadly bolts strike nearby and the light frames my older brother for a second. Yep, that was close but it still missed my target by a mile. Still, I get the chance to get back at him when he looks around and knows I saw him jump. "Scardycat," I mouth at him behind Mom.
Another storm rages outside, full of lightning and thunder. I can smell rain but it refuses to fall and cool the air. "Oh, how I hate living here," I think as I set the plates on the table.
Here is Shreveport, Louisiana. Early summer. Hot. Humid. Flashes and rumbles rule the Cajun sky, penning me in the house with Mitch and my bratty, little sister, Billie. How I hate living here.
"Dinner's ready!" Mom hollers. "Come on, everyone! Get it while it's hot!"
"Great. That's all I need. More heat," I mutter as we sit down, all of us dripping sweat and almost too miserable to eat. Except for Mitch, of course. I think he could still eat even if he had a bolt of lightning stuck down his throat.
All the windows and doors are open wide in hopes of catching any stray breezes to relieve the oppressive heat. Not much chance of that with the rain being too stubborn to fall.
Even as hot as it is, we kids still manage to drive each other batty with sneaky pinches, nasty kicks and general bickering. Business as usual, no matter how much it storms outside.
"KNOCK IT OFF!" Ooops! Dad's angry voice can settle us down faster than anything else can. "Pass the butter, Mitch, and leave Tara alone," Dad snaps. Ha ha!! I get to gloat again!
Snap! Crackle! Spinning around in surprise, we all watch, speechless, as a bolt of pure energy slams through the kitchen screen door. It drops and spins wildly across the wooden floor. Heading towards the dinner table with deadly aim, a rolling ball of lightning shoots sparks in all directions while we sit in frozen shock. Popping and crackling with electrical fury, it flies past the table, ignoring my silent plea to take Mitch with it. Then spitting fire, it smacks into the living room wall and blows up like the M80 Mitch put in the neighbor's mailbox last year. It disappears, leaving behind a family of statues sitting at a silent dinner table.
Mom, Dad, Mitch, Billie and I just sit staring at the wall. No one moves. Billie's fork just hangs in the air; Dad's glass of milk is frozen in place halfway to his mouth. No one blinks. I'm not sure if any of us are even breathing. At last, we slowly turn and look at each other.
"Did you see that?" five worried voices ask in unison.
Crash! Boom!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The roar of thunder snaps me back to the present. In the moment between flash and crash, I had gone back over twenty years and relived one of the strangest moments of my life.
Shivers run up and down my spine as I remember how we couldn't find one single shred of evidence left behind by that fireball. There should have been a melted hole in the screen door, but there wasn't. We couldn't find one single burn mark on the floor or even a scorched spot on the wall where that thing exploded and disappeared. If not for the five of us seeing the same thing that day...
To this day, I can't explain what really happened. Since then, I have lived through all kinds of weather. I have seen flash floods create rivers in downtown San Antonio. I have seen wicked air funnels suck the earth up and spit it out into the Missouri sky. I've watched baseball-sized chucks of ice slice the air and smash into the North Dakota fields. I have witnessed Mother Nature run amok in all her wild and savage glory, but I have never seen another runaway ball of lightning.
Flash! Rumble. Rumble. Boom!
I can feel the rain cooling the air now. Yes, it's just a chill that's causing goosebumps to march across my arms. Shivering with the cold, I reach out and close my window. I better go check the rest of the windows and doors. I don't want the kids to catch a nasty summer cold, do I? Why take chances?
Yes, why take chances? I said I've never seen another lightning ball since that day. I never said I wanted to.
Flash! Rumble. Rumble. Boom!
I was standing in the rec room of the coed barracks looking out the window at the fog that was blanketing all of Fort Ord, California. Tiny foglets were clinging to the outside of the window with fingers tracing patterns of desire. New to California, I had never seen fog as thick as this before and it fascinated me. I wanted to rush outside and lose myself in the white wall that covered the army post but I was waiting for someone.
I had met a man and I was waiting for him to arrive.
Oh yes, reader, I can hear you now. That old story. You have heard this one before. A woman and a man...
When one is in the army, moving is a constant and one needs to learn how to make quick judgments on a person. Sometimes the judgment is correct; sometimes it is not.
This particular gentleman, and I use the word loosely, and I had hit it off right from the start. We had sat for hours talking about where we had been, where our lives were taking us and what we wanted out of it. Of course we had only met three days before that but what does that matter? We were young and exploring life and its options together for the moment.
I had mentioned to him that I was a fledgling writer. Short stories and poetry had flowed out of me with ease since I was young. His ears had perked up with interest. He was a budding guitarist. Oh great! Another moment of bonding! We both were of the creative sort.
When he asked to see my work, I immediately agreed. What young unpublished and aspiring author does not want to be admired for their works? I went up to the third floor where the women were barracked and retrieved the stenographers notebook where I had stored my treasured "Pieces of My Heart" and brought it down for his perusal. He read a piece or two aloud and commented on them, both favorably and critically. Yes! A person who understood me! One who knew the dynamics of writing and who could show me ways to improve as well.
It was getting late so when he asked if he could take the book with him to finish reading in his room and return it the next day, I trusted him. After all, was he not a brother in the service and also a fellow sensitive soul? I handed him the book and shyly asked him to be kind to me and my heart.
The tiny foglets were retreating from the window rejoining their family, sad to be denied entrance into the strange world inside the building where the two-legged creatures lived. I glanced at my watch. It was getting late. Where was my friend? What was taking him so long to come downstairs?
The door opened and I eagerly turned around. Two WACs and a GI sauntered in and headed for the pool table and the beer machine. The door shut behind them. No one else came in.
"Hey guys!" I moved towards the giggling trio. "Have you seen Randy lately?"
"Randy? Randy, who?" the petite blonde WAC asked.
"Randy. Randy, the tall blacked-haired guitarist who lives on the second floor. The Spec4 who works at the motorpool. That Randy."
The skinny little GI who was racking up the balls on the pool table turned his head and eyed me. "Randy? Heck, he is gone, girl!" he muttered past the cigarette that was threatening to drop its ashes upon the table as he jiggled the balls into place.
"Gone??? What do you mean he is gone??"
"Randy shipped out early this morning to Germany. He got transferred, you goof. Didn't he tell you last night?" and he lined up his pool stick and spun the balls into a frenzy.
I stood looking out the window of the barracks watching the fog retreat across the land wishing that I could go with it. My heart was packed in a duffel bag, kidnapped into a foreign land. A part of me was gone forever never to be seen again.
Betrayed....
Today I realized something. I was nagging my kids once again about doing their jobs and fair-share household living when I looked into my thirteen-year-old daughter's eyes and saw her laughing at me..
I felt my hackles rising and had a need to "reach out and slap some one". Instinct told me that she was attacking me; she was. Yes, it was time. The infamous and inevitable "mother/daughter" duel.
Men have their own duels. Everyone knows of the father/son power struggle and manhood rites. Every culture has a way of having young men prove to themselves that they are as good if not better than the preceding generation.
On the other hand, women's rites of passage have always been secrets kept within female circles. Mysterious, mystical...words used to describe women and their ways. Women are difficult for men to understand. That has been our way for eons.
Because of this difference, the mother/daughter battle is not as well known outside the circle of daughter/mother. Women have been accused of playing "head games". Personally, I like to think that I hold myself above such childish ways. Usually. (Meow) Unfortunately, all women are doomed to fall back on "head games" when feeling angry or threathened. With my daughter I felt both.
One of the worst things you can do to me is laugh at me. Whether I deserve it or not matters little. I am instantly reduced to a two-year-old's mentality and I have a very emotional temper tantrum. This is all done mentally in the matter of perhaps five seconds. Then all hell breaks loose. I become a new person. All thought processes clog up with fury and my mental chain of command goes on over-drive.
This is when I become my cattiest and I often bloody my claws. Though in most situations I could never be considered as one who holds her tongue, when my daughter's eyes look at me with mocking laughter, my sun sign, Leo, roars out her battle call and it's no holds barred.
Today her eyes mocked me. I stood there in shock and swiftly considered all the alternatives to things I could say or do to her. Then I realized what it had come down to. Who is the queen bee? If she wants my kitchen, then she can have it. If she wants the bathroom, fine with me. But whatever it is that she is fighting for, she must take the bad with the good or else she'll have to fight her way through me.
Sure, little girl, I'll initiate you into adult womanhood rites. It's my job; it's what I do.
After my simple mind figured all this out and I realized that infanticide is still illegal, I realized something extraordinary. I could put my intensely emotional thoughts on paper, release the energy stored in my quivering muscles and record my observations on parenthood, all at the same time. What therapy!!!
~All thoughts here and perceived actions are just figments of my imagination. I do NOT endorse child abuse. This was written as a parody. Though my daughter DID laugh at me as portrayed above and I DID react emotionally, I did NOT slap her or any such thing. I wrote this story instead. (g) Ain't fiction grand?~