What comes to mind when you think of summer? Sun? Vacation? Heat? Beaches? I'm pretty sure that I got at least one of those correct. Let me ask you another way: out of all the things that come to your mind: what is the thing you are most excited about every spring, once the temperatures gradually rise, and that one morning finally comes: the one where you leave your house and you can feel the shift in the air. Something is different. You can't quite put your finger on it. But it feels like summer. The other day also exists, the one in early September, where the sun shines, but it just feels a bit different on the skin. Less intense, less genuine. I love both these days. For me they are yearly milestone, just like christmas or your birthday or your countries national holiday.
I love summer itself for none of the reasons I listed above. What I love most about summer, is the rain, and specifically the thunderstorms. I do like the heat, not the insane sveltering temperatures we got up to this year in Europe but the "normal" heat. I my mind, I imagine the heat being byproduct of the sky being charged with energy for thunder, and making the water for the coming downpour start it's skybound journey upwards. Without the heat, there is no thunder. I have made my peace with it. I will take days of sleeping with open windows, still sweating, for these sweet few minutes of the storm.
When I see the little thunderstorm icon in my weather app, I get reasonably excited. I imagine myself already cozied up next to a window, watching natures spectacle outside.
You feel it when it is about to start. There is just a different energy in the air. The sky is darkening more than it has any right to on any given day in the summer. The wind starts picking up. You see the grass moving along with the pulsing gusts. They are the messengers. And they say: get ready, it's about to start.
The first drops hit. The first rumbling in the distance. The wind picks up. The rain gets stronger. And then the sky lets loose in a cathartic display of natures fury. Raindrops fly almost horizontally trough the air. The visibility get's obscured by the sheer amount of water gushing from the sky. The rumblings get more frequent, the delayed flashes momentarily lighting up the sky. And in that moment, I of course count the seconds from the rumble to gauge how far away I am from the most intense part of the storm.
All while sitting safely in my shelter. Inside, on porch or a sheltered balcony. Merely an observer, not participating. Maybe I should feel bad? There is this amazing play going out just in front of me, and I could take part by just taking a few brave steps forward. Nah, I don't want to get wet. I want to be cozy. And that I am.
And then the storm subsides. Usually leaving the temperatures dropped for a few minutes. The air clean, and smelling of that addicting rain smell. The whole atmosphere just got powerwashed. And I loved every minute of it.
There is one more anecdote I would like to share.
When I was younger, my grandmother had a german shepard mix called Teddy. Teddy was a sweet dog. I do remember playing with him a lot. He was quite low energy but he enjoyed my company a lot. He must have, I'm sure as a toddler I probably wasn't always the most gentle with him. I don't know how old I was when Teddy succumbed to illness. I don't think I was much older than six. I was unsurprisingly pretty upset about it. My parents told me he went to heaven. As all dogs and cats do. I don't care if heaven exists or not, these sweet creatures are going there. Anyways. After that, every time there was a thunderstorm and I was scared about it, my parents used to say: "Don't be scared, it's just Teddy playing bowling in the sky!". This stuck very hard with me. I guess we can put this into the core memory register. Even now, 30-ish years later, I cannot hear the rumble of thunder without thinking about Teddy.
- Cass