5:14 AM: Rain, Rain, Thunder and Light

5:14 A.M. and I’ve already forgotten the dream I was awakened from. The rain is constant, the thunder loud, and I can see the flashes of lightning through my eyelids.  When I eventually open my eyes, the sky is lit up equally through the windows in front of me and to my side—as though I am surrounded by nature’s paparazzi. After nearly a year with no rain, nature seems to have regained her memory over the past few months. The lake has started to fill up again and perhaps our water restrictions will soon be lifted and the warnings of e coli and arsenic that seem to have been prompted by low water levels in the wells will be contradicted as well.

It has been years since I gave up actually drinking the water and shifted to the delivery of large garrafones of water. One constantly sits on the center island of my kitchen and pitchers of water are  replenished as needed in each bathroom. I am wondering if I placed large receiving receptacles on the terraces, well out from where they’d be filled by roof runoff, if that water would be pure, or if even the sky is infected by our presence under it?

The return of the rain has made me hope that nature has not turned its back on her molesters. Every time I open the door of my storage cabinet outside the kitchen door, I see the stacks of plastic containers I have saved to reuse but that by their numbers will soon necessitate my taking them to join the bags of recyclables left for garbage collection each week. Again, I make the fruitless pledge that If there were places where I could furnish my own receptacles to fill up with my laundry and dish detergent, my foodstuff, my shampoo, face cream and medicine, I would do so.  But with all of our “advances” in AI and transportation and communication, even after all these years of warning, we seem to be deaf to nature’s warnings: the firestorms and floods and droughts and hurricanes and landslides.

Along with the wars we keep staging against each other, we face the threat of nature fighting back against us all. I shut the  lid to my computer and try to resume sleep—to reclaim my dream—but my efforts are fruitless. Rain drums a constant rhythm and is joined by a crack of thunder so loud that it seems to split the sky and travel in a circle around me. One of the dogs cries outside my sliding glass door to my room, terrorized, at last, by nature’s mortar attack.  I open the door and let them all in.  They will be wet and activated by the energy of thunder, rain and lightning, but both I and the sheets will eventually dry, and we will furnish some comfort to each other  as nature continues to launch both its attack and its blessings around us.

5:57. I’ve let the dogs in and it is as though they’ve been energized by lightning  flashes. Morrie’s long coat is wet and smelly. It takes a large beach towel to dry him off. The little dogs are frenetic—leaping up around and upon me, turning the sheets into a whirlwind. Thunder and lightning invade our ears and eyes by turns. The printer hums to life as though given a command by the storm. I have moved to the living room as Wifi seems to have deserted the bedroom. This has been happening regularly over the past few weeks. Drip drip drip of the rain off the roof into the metal cat dishes outside the kitchen door.  The kitties are crying to be fed two hours before schedule. I let them in, dry their rain-filled dishes and let them in to the kitchen for an early breakfast.  We are a family unified by rain.