Storm Watching

                Gray green clouds rolled through the summer sky. Clouds heavy with a storm. The thunder already echoing through the air. The wind picked up. The leaves on the trees shuddered in unison. Litter and other debris tumbled down our neighborhood street on the edge of the breeze. A flash of lightening followed by thunder rippling across the sky.

                “If you count between the flash of lightening and the clap of thunder, you can figure out how many miles away the storm is,” said my father.

                He unfolded a metal lawn chair on our concrete front porch. The chair was typical for the early 1980’s, late 1970’s. It was a rounded metal frame with a weaved seat and back. The pattern was a sort of plastic flannel, light green and dark green, outlined with white. It’s the sort of chair you see in all the Polaroid pictures of the era; ubiquitous at summer parties, strewn about some long driveway or at a park.  There was usually some overweight Uncle or Aunt sitting in them, a brown liquor in one hand, perhaps a long cigarette in the other hand. That lawn chair was utilitarian and everywhere.

                “How do I count, like, just the seconds or do I count like, one Mississippi, two Mississippi…,” I asked.

                “You can use the Mississippi’s. That a full second. It’ll reveal exactly how far and how fast the storm is moving,” said my father.

                “Cool,” I said.

                I sat on the concrete step of the front porch and waited for the next thunder clap. My father opened an Old Style and sat in the lawn chair. The sky darkened. The azure summer sky was fading into black. Cars driving down our busy one-way city street were turning their headlights on as the afternoon seemed to turn to night. I felt the static in the air on the hairs of my arms. The wind was whipping around and bending the grass in sweeping swirls as if brushed by an invisible hand. I could smell the dampness of the rain in the swirling air.

                “I do love a good thunderstorm,” said my father.

                He sipped from his can of beer loudly and sighed heavily; as if the effort of drinking from the can had somehow exhausted him. I didn’t say anything. It was probably his sixth can of beer that day. He’d be asleep by nine.

                The sky cracked and a flash as bright as day illuminated the gathering darkness.

                “Start counting,” said my father.

                I began my Mississippi’s. I got to three when the boom of thunder rattled across the sky. I looked over my shoulder at my father.

                “Three miles away,” he said.

                “Neat,” I said.

                The storm rolled in. It was eating up the warmth that had so filled the morning. The breeze had cooled everything as it rushed forward at the front of the storm.  I started to hear the fat raindrops ping against the aluminum gutters. I could hear them splat against the sidewalk in front of the porch.

                “Here it comes,” said my father. He was excited. It was normally hard to tell.

                The clouds opened and sheets of rain began to fall. The rain seemed biblical. The rain was the wrath of God pouring down on the guilty and innocent alike. I had to step back from the top step of the stoop. I moved to the side of my father’s folding chair under the awning. He was laughing. The noise of the storm, the thunder and lightning, the pounding rain smacking against the ground, wasn’t enough to drown out my father’s cackle. He did love a good thunderstorm.

                The wind started to blow the heavy rain towards us and we started getting wet. The rain was coming in thick waves of water. It reminded me of going through a car wash. The streets quickly filled and the bare dirt spot by the maple tree in front of the house was flooding. We were getting splashed by the heavy rain.

                “We’d better go in,” said my father.

                He stood from the lawn chair and folded it quickly. He pulled open the aluminum front door and I sneaked into the house under his arm. He followed me in quickly just as the rain began to pummel the front door. The storm window was still in. I stood looking at the rain hit the glass, churning like a washing machine.

                My father put the lawn chair up against the bookcase in the foyer and went into the living room. He turned on the TV. I stood at the door.  Lightening flashed. Thunder followed immediately.

                “It’s right over us,” I said.

                I looked into the living room as my father clicked his way through the remote control, looking for something to watch on TV.  I stayed at the screen door seeing my own young reflection in the glass of the storm window mixed with the streaks of rain on the outside.

                The storm moved down our street as quickly as it had arrived. The black sky, the green gray clouds drifting East, opening up to the sun, still shining over it all.