Reflections on a Stormy Night

Written about twelve years ago.

My eyes shot open and saw only the darkness of my room. Heart pounding, too dazed to realize what had awoken me, I turned to the illuminated alarm clock next to my bed. It was 2:14 in the morning, only an hour since I had turned off my light and gone to sleep. I had been up late reading a Mary Stewart novel, despite the whole shelf devoted to Dickens and my resolve to someday read all of his works.

I closed my eyes again. I was just slipping back to sleep when that horrible, deafening roar and rumble, which had evidently been the cause of my interrupted sleep, invaded my room and mind. Once again my heart beat furiously, pumping out fear to every inch of my body. I was wide awake now. There’s something about thunder in the dark that had always frightened me, but only when I was alone, which was most of the time, since I had my own bedroom. After my fear reflex came the shame. I was 17 years old and about to start my senior year of high school – I had no right to be frightened of a little thunder, It’s so primitive.

There was a flash of light and I immediately clamped my eyelids shut and waited, cowering in mental silence, for the thunder to come. It came and I flinched, resisting what I knew was the only remedy to my situation. Darn this blasted monsoon season, I thought. I lay motionless, hoping fruitlessly that the storm and my fear would pass. There was another roll of thunder and I knew I had to, even though it was so embarrassing. I did it every year and I didn’t have the courage to make an exception this time. 

I waited for the next clap to fade away, and then I sat up, swung my feet to the floor, grabbed my pillow and federdecke, and darted out of my room, stumbling over my shoes on the way. I wasted no time in turning the corner into the hallway leading to my parents’ bedroom. I walked hurriedly, blindly down the hallway and entered the bedroom.

Immediately I could hear my dad’s snore and the rhythmic breathing of my mother’s sleep. I fumbled my way around the door to the couch in the corner, where I lay down and arranged my nest for the rest of the night. Once I was comfortable, I listened to my parents, laid my head back on my pillow and felt safe again. I reflected on how happy I would be the day I could stay in my own room because there would be someone there with me and I wouldn’t be alone. Just then there was another flash of light and the thunder came only moments later; it was the closest and loudest one yet. For the moment I would have to content myself with my parents.

“That one was definitely a meat-eater,” I thought with a little smile as I recollected a previous thunderstorm from my dinosaur period as a very little girl. The thunder had cried out then as it had now, and I had turned to my mother very seriously and inquired, “I wonder if that was a plant-eater or a meat-eater,” apparently convinced that whatever had made such a gargantuan noise must have been a dinosaur and just curious as to what kind.

Unfortunately and pathetically for me, the truth about thunder had scared me more at 17 than the notion of a dinosaur had at five. I guess at five I’d always known that if a T-Rex did come storming into my room, Luke Skywalker would be there with his light-saber to save me. At 17, I had enough imagination to get me electrocuted, but not enough to get me saved. 

T-Rex always was my worst nightmare in my early years, until I had the dream about my dad abandoning me on a street-corner. I never told anyone about that dream until years later. A dear teacher had once commented to my sophomore English class that the biggest fear among infants and young children was abandonment. It made sense. At least it explained why I could never watch Dumbo without my mother sitting next to me. I suppose it also helped explain this need to be with someone during a thunderstorm too – if I were with someone I felt secure, and if something were to happen, I wouldn’t be abandoned or alone. 

My dad sounded like he was about to choke himself, but the storm was dying down. And so I tried once again to go back to sleep, pondering on the Tongue Wars and wondering if Luke would or could save my dad for us.