lightning bolts and oysters

I awoke Saturday night to flashes beyond the blinds and then a major rumble. Windows shuddered. My son roamed the house, finding the best storm views.

I used to get up with both kids and Tim on nights like these. They don’t happen often in our area, so we wanted to catch the show. Our faces aimed between opened curtains, we four insignificants would lean elbows and chests the wrong way into couch supports and stare. Tim explained weather currents, electricity and air, discrepancy between sound and light speeds. Our bodies tensed, “Wow, did you see that one?” then relaxed under roll upon roll of noise, the world a changed and beaten thing brought back to quick existence by the next flash, “There!” “Oo, yeah, that’s a close one.” Words drowned by atmospheric tympani. Sleep-need sponged away until, after an hour or so of storm it pressured eyelids, and cheeks slid to rest on the sofa back, before groans and the lifting of limbs toward familiar beds in an undreamed landscape.

Yesterday I chatted on the phone with Mom, telling her some possible plans our son has for the fall. Encouraging as always, she responded, “The world’s his oyster.”

True, I think. It’s a big world, though. Storms flash through it, waking sleepers to unplanned excitements. I wish for both my children a calm voice to sound during those nights the weather catches them unprotected. Will they find the nerve to stare and discuss and even laugh during moments of dark trouble?

Somehow, quite often, people do. May we each continue out in the wide world seeking our elusive pearls.