Spring Storm

Lightning flashes blue-white, illuminating the entire cottage, followed closely by the crackle of thunder. Little Gia has curled up beside me, burying her nose under my thigh, hunkered down as if the rain is actually falling upon her. She isn't much for thunder storms and depends upon my bravery to ease her little fears. She doesn't know how much comfort and security I find in her nestling so close beside me and depending on me.

I sit here an hour after sunset with only two nightlights on, plus the glow of my unplugged laptop screen. I wont plug it in until the lightening subsides. The house shakes, firmly planted on its nine-foot pilings but flexing under the push of the wind. Through uninsulated walls, I clearly hear the rain slapping the siding. It is plinking onto my windows and pelting the roof. There is a fine tinkling noise as it clinks onto the furnace exhaust pipe. Every surface sings with it. Nothing in the house is more than seventeen feet from my reach. That means that the wind and the rain are that close too. There is but three-quarters of an inch of sheeting on my ten-foot tent ceiling protecting me from some errant streak of lightening.

I prefer to sit, not stand, during thunderstorms.

Pushing its way out to Long Beach Island across the bay, this storm is riding along the New Jersey coast. I can still see the lights from Holgate there, although I expect the storm to erase those soon, as the rain thickens heading south. There they go... LBI's lights just disappeared. The downpour is heading for them and will reach them in less than a minute. I picture families on vacation running for cover as funnel cake stands close their shed roofs. This storm will only be seen by the early arrivals, but it is a three day weekend and many will have stretched that to four, arriving today (Thursday) instead. I know this because I rode down the parkway with scores of them earlier this evening.

A boat is exiting the lagoon. No one would go out in this wickedness if they didn't have to, so I know it must be the Sea Tow fellow. He lives on my son, Mike's, lagoon and he always goes out in the worst of conditions. This time he has his spotlight on and he's training it on the bulkheads he is passing. I don't think I've ever seen that before. Apparently the rain is so heavy that he cannot see the way out to the bay and has to spot the sides of the lagoon to guide himself out. When he gets to the end of the peninsula he doesn't turn right to the bay but, instead, continues spotlighting along the bulkhead on the left. Perhaps there is trouble down there? Perhaps someone there called for help. I step out onto my deck under the marginal shelter of the overhang to see where he is going. When his spotlight turns from the bulkhead out to the bay I am startled to see it catch something small and white in the water. I wonder "Has a boat overturned?" and I watch horrified, but only briefly, as he turns his engines up to high power and streaks past the white buoy and into the open churning bay. In seconds he has disappeared. I see his boat only once more in a bright flash of lightning, and then he is gone.

It is hard to imagine that less than thirty minutes ago Gia and I had ventured down to the small beach on South Green Street to look for more mating horseshoe crabs. I had seen the lightening off inland quite a distance and wondered if we should walk or drive. It was a good thing we drove. At the beach under the light of my flashlight I saw a gathering of ten or more crabs, piled one on the other and doing what I now know to be a mating ritual. But before I was done watching, I began to feel the raindrops and by the time I got into the car the lightening was above us. In my U-turn on the road I could feel the force of the wind broadsiding my car and I was so glad to be safely within.

When I drove past the little restaurant on the corner I could see that their fixed dock was already being overtaken by the tide. I haven't checked the charts, but that may mean there will be flooding tonight. If so, I will need to move my car over to Frank's yard later, where his driveway ramp sits a full ten inches higher than mine: just enough to save me from salt damage on my wheels.

When I pulled into my driveway the storm was raging so much that Gia wouldn't get out of her seat and I had to pick her up and carry her to the stairs. Then I ran back to move the bicycle: the rain was blowing sideways under the house and already soaking it down.

An hour into the storm, my neighbors arrive and haul their luggage into the house under a torrent of rain. I venture out onto my front deck to holler,

"Hi Tom, how are you doing?" and over another rumble of thunder he replies,

"Pretty good - how about you?"

I see that the street is already filling up with flood waters and I realize that I should be moving my car.

"When is the high tide?" I ask, but it is already too late. His wife has parked their car on Frank's ramp. My car will have to weather the storm on the lower ground.

Storms like this one are so common down here, yet they never cease to amaze me. As the wind shifts and rocks the house, often I will go out into the stinging rain to flip on the flood light and watch as the lagoon water churns. It is frightening but fun. I don't believe myself to be in any real danger or I'd head into town or up north. But even if I am safe, safety is a very relative thing. There is no doubt in my mind that the thunder which just shook the house and made my dishes rattle came from lightning that could blast my small cottage to bits if it were a direct strike. I am not as "safe" here as I would be in my living room in Middletown.

But I like this small danger. I enjoy the tiny fright of being here on the edge of the bay, a mile from the great Atlantic Ocean. I like feeling small, with my nose tucked under God's thigh. And maybe God feels better too, knowing that I am here depending on him.


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