April 18, 2002
Thursday

If I ever moved from Florida, I would miss the storms terribly. Not that we've had many in the last couple years, mind you. The drought put a stop to that.

When I went to OSU for college, people's reaction to storms was funny. There were only a couple that I recall, and the media treated them like an apocalypse. There could be lightning! There will be wind! And lots and lots of RAIN!

Central Florida is the lighting capital of the world. Growing up there as a child has endeared me to storms, instead of making me overly frightened. I loved watching heat lightning on warm summer evenings as it danced through clouds that seemed bigger than the sky itself. And the smell of the air; its gentle and sudden movements. The lull and caress of thunder in the distance.

Whenever I experience this now, it immediately occurs to me that I'm home; and this is what happened earlier. Though, it wasn't exactly the same. It was dusk. The clouds brown and the sky both blue and gray. A chill grew steadily on the wind, racing to its impending burst of rain. And when the shower came, it was still nostalgia. It's suppose to rain in Florida, and I miss it.

Even during the day, the summer sky tells me that I'm home. "These are the clouds of Michelangelo" Joni Mitchell once wrote. I never appreciated them until I returned from college and my cross country travels.

A while after the shower, I drove to Orlando. (I'm house-sitting for Mom while she visits my brother in Atlanta this weekend.) Even running late, I decided to stop in at the Scream'n Bean to see if Austin was there. He wasn't. In fact the whole place was dead, probably because of our teeny burst of rain. It amazes me how people react to storms. The next time we have a big one, I am going out to dance and play.