Highlight of my week #2

Lightning fills the dark sky. The branches towering above the car rustle and shake; the wind rises; rain begins to pelt the windshield. Eventually, we decide it won't subside, so we run for it. I lose a shoe in the downpour; I am drenched by the time I retrieve it and make it to the door. I am drenched but not cold. I have on no sweater, no jacket; I am back in the land of normal weather, and the wet pavement is warm beneath my bare feet.


If you had asked me at age thirteen to name my favorite smell in the world, I would have had trouble resolving a tie. On the one hand, there is freshly cut grass, a smell so ubiquitous in summertime in my favorite place on earth (my grandparents' small town on the coast of Rhode Island) that the aroma brings the smell of the ocean right with it, and that combination settles in me a sense of contentment. But then there is the smell of rain on hot pavement; the smell of the steam that rises as I walk my dog after school in the rain. I place one foot on the stone curb and then the next precisely in front of it, pretending I am on a balancing wire, as my dog runs through whichever yards she feels like exploring next. We trek around the neighborhood for as short or long as we want because this is youth; we have nowhere we need to be. We trek around in the rain because it's 85 degrees out, so the moisture, though sizzling at my feet, is soothing to me; it is natural; it is regular; and it is delicious. We walk in the rain and we frolic until we or the rain sees fit to stop. This is freedom.

When we get home, I will go downstairs to the family room and lie on my back on the sofa and read a book or lie on my belly on the gold shag rug that's been there since the 70s and watch tv. When the thunder comes, I will turn toward the large glass doors beside me and wait for the lightning that I have just missed to repeat itself. I will lie in the cool embrace of air conditioning and watch the three-story-tall woods out back sway with a strength that might be unnerving if you hadn't seen trees move like that a million times before. I will watch the sky darken to puke green or yellow; will watch leaves spin in the wind; will listen to the cracking boom of very nearby lightning and find it thrilling, for this is Earth at its liveliest; this is Earth breathing.