Last night there was a rare winter thunder and lightning storm accompanied by incessant rain and whipping wind. I lay awake in bed for hours, nursing fearful excitement within my belly as the bolts of light and the cracks of sound converged.
Listening to a thunderstorm at bedtime is a childhood mnemonic, crystallized by the 1982 movie Poltergeist, in which I learned to count the seconds in between lightning and thunder so I’d know when the tree branch outside my window would become animated, seize me from my bed, and carry me away into the night.
Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work. – Mark Twain
It’s impossible for me to sleep during a thunder storm. Some primal puissance exerts itself over my mind, and I’m as charged as the air. My wide eyes dart at the abrupt illuminations of my room and the shadows on the bare white ceiling. But I am no longer a child. I know that the storm will pass, and I will sleep, and there will be a blue sky in the morning.
