The Wind and the Rain

Something woke me up. And in that confused, delirious middle-of-the-night moment, I lay there in bed, listening. My husband’s deep breathing told me he was still asleep. It was the noise outside that woke me.

The pitter-patter of the evening rain had turned into a regular downpour. It sounded like some maniac was heaving buckets and buckets and buckets of water onto our roof. The rain kept coming and I kept listening. The rhythm of the raindrops soothed me back into a partial state of slumber. Soon enough, the siren from the firehouse blared. In weather like that, it’s hard to imagine a raging fire. I don’t want any part of a fire that sustains in a downpour. Neither my husband nor the dog took notice of the siren. The rain pounded on.

It was probably three-thirty in the morning and the thunder rolled like that Garth Brooks song–without the cheating husband part, of course–here in Mayberry. I imagined the gray, billowing clouds in the sky and the natural smell of wet grass and soil in the air. You don’t need vision to catch the highlights of a thunderstorm.

I rolled over, fighting for bed covers with the terrier. He burrows under them every night, a farm dog under duvet hay. He huffed at the disturbance and changed position, flopping right next to my belly. His warm little body comforted me.

I turned my attention again to the thunderstorm’s rage and the wind roiling sheets of rain as I drifted off towards dreamland. What woke me up would put me back to sleep eventually.