Cool, cool, cool

I heard thunder earlier this month, which totally caught me off guard. And that was sort of an odd feeling.

As a child of the midwest, I am no stranger to thunder, or any of the other trappings of a storm.

They’d roll through with so much frequency – sometimes one after the next – they hardly ever seemed of note.
Even the really bad ones.
Even like, the one or two times we had thunder and lightning with snow (lake effect is wild).

I also need to mention here – some of those storm systems ripped through the land and caused a lot of heartache. Storms continue to do so. So I don’t want to leave any of that unmentioned – or minimize even one of the experiences others may have had. I can only speak for me. And I speak purely as someone who has had the privilege of, thus far, never having any real negative association with storms whatsoever.

Quite the contrary, infact.

I grew up in a house with good windows. Big, all the way to the floor. When I was little, I’d huddle myself inside the curtains and camp out there with a pile of blankets and toys, and sometimes I’d hold up there – literally for days. 
Especially when it rained.
Especially when it stormed.

I’d ooooh and ahhhhh every time a big streak of lightning would light up the sky – some of them were so bright and massive, I’d wonder if the sky was being cracked open. And with each boom, I’d jump – as if I somehow wasn’t expecting it. (But the same way I jump at scary movies now – despite the fact I fucking love them.) I even remember watching the weather channel with my parents, being totally enamoured and genuinely excited each time I’d see the graphics of storm clusters headed our way. There was just something about them – haunting, otherworldly. They shook the ground and electrified the clouds, and I loved every little magical bit of it. Even well into adulthood, where still nothing – and I do mean nothing – beats falling asleep to the sound of thunder.

Imagine my great surprise then years ago – to learn that thunderstorms in the Greater Vancouver area?

Nooooooot really a thing. Actually, pretty rare.

All the conditions that make the atmosphere ripe for storm formation in the midwest, are the same ones that are missing from here. Two entirely different climates. Drastically different weather. I know a lot of Americans hear “Canada” and think “cold”. But actually, if there’s one word I could use to describe the weather in this part of BC?

Mild.

It’s consistently coastal. It is either rain, or overcast, or sun – sometimes all three in a day (weirdly, sometimes all of them, all at once??) And wind can show up anytime, as it blows inland off of The Pacific. But never too much of an extreme in either direction. No snow, no storms. (Not never – but super uncommon)

That being said, the other night – after not a particularly rainy or remarkable weather-day – suddenly there were distant rumbles.

But, we live in a fairly busy part of an already rather lively area – it’s not uncommon at all for anything – a big truck, a door slam, equipment rattle (or literally any other generic city noise) to send a loud crack into the air as it bounces against all the metal and concrete. So, (despite the fact it didn’t sound like any of those things – it sounded like fucking thunder) we talked ourselves into assuming that whatever it was, happened the one time and was probably over. But then it happened again – and then not too long after, again. It became impossible to deny-

It was unmistakably thunder. 

The rain soon followed. And then I had to go outside. 

I stood on our patio and looked up at the clouds. The “storm” didn’t last long, and the rain stopped pretty soon after – but it didn’t matter. I was completely enchanted all the same.

I mean it when I say – I wouldn’t trade absolutely anything about this place for anything, and not for any reason. But. I’d be lying if I said sometimes I didn’t miss seeing the lightning. Hearing the thunder. It had become the white noise for so much of my life that it almost makes me wonder if I just need more practice with calm. 

I’ve been trying, though.
There’s stuff I don’t think I knew how to tackle before. Stuff I couldn’t seem to wrap my head around fully in my previous climate. All of my trust issues, struggles with self-esteem, and not wanting to burden people – outdated, derelect pieces of myself I’ve let stay attached for far too long. I have a lot of work to do to clear out what has been there before. There will continue to be more work. I come from a stormy place – and I was stormy there, too. While much less frequent, it seems thunder is not gone from my life. Weather is funny like that. Weather doesn’t logic, it doesn’t reason, it doesn’t consider. It is purely conditional.

Maybe that’s why (according to the internet) at a certain age, we start talking about the weather all the time. (And evidently, if you’re me – write blog posts about it.)

Here’s to overthinking, to metaphors, and forever rolling with the thunder-

MV