A front row seat for a thunderstorm ~ July 13, 2000

David Heiller

 Noah and I each grabbed an umbrella and headed outside for an exciting Saturday night at the Heiller house.

A thunderstorm was heading our way, and we wanted to be a part of it.

Noah and David

News banners on the television screen had set the stage. Warning beeps sounded like the distress signal of a sinking submarine. Then some weather man with a real voice, a voice like yours or mine, spoke over the now-silent tennis match.

“At 7:47 p.m., a line of thunderstorms was spotted on Doppler radar moving north northeast at approximately 18 miles an hour. This storm contains hail the size of Volkswagons. In its path is the city of Finlayson and the Heiller residence.”

That’s what my imagination said at least.

There’s something about a thunderstorm that is both frightening and fascinating. You hope you don’t get zapped. You hope the wind doesn^’t turn into a tornado, or that six inches of rain doesn’t fall in two hours. You hope the hail doesn’t grow to the size of softballs. But you still want to watch it, especially the first one of the year, which this was for me.

So I unplugged the computer and VCR, and headed outside with the 17-year-old son. I was glad Noah agreed to come with me. He must have felt the same lure of the storm. There’s hope for the teenagers of the world yet!

The thunder and lightning took their time hitting us. Some thunderstorms bear down on you like a racehorse. This one ambled in like an elephant. We sat in lawn chairs first. Then as the rain picked up, we realized that mere umbrellas wouldn’t quite cut it. We moved to the pole barn, then the truck. Finally Noah suggested the greenhouse.

“Perfect,” I shouted. That’s where we settled.

The lightning flashes got brighter. It would be pitch dark, then instantly as bright as day. “I’m getting my sunglasses,” Noah shouted over the thunder. “Grab mine too,” I answered.

It must have looked pretty strange, two men standing in the dark, wearing sunglasses, at 10 at night. But that was us. We were cool.

I had brought out a box of crackers. We ate them and talked about storms we had been in before. I said I was glad we weren’t camping.

David and Noah during a different rain storm.

“Imagine being under a big white pine in the Boundary Waters.”

“You’d die for sure,” Noah answered. Thunderstorms will get you thinking like that.

Then the clouds really let go. Rain fell about as hard as rain can fall. The plastic of the greenhouse sagged under a river of rain. We touched the plastic. It seemed alive.

“It feels weird, doesn’t it?” Noah said. It did.

The rain relieved the thunder and lightning. The storm lost it’s angry will and slowly plowed to the east.

It hadn’t hit us directly. It was never that scary kind of a storm, one that bears down on you like a Mack truck and really has you worried about life and limb.

No lightning bolts had put the fear of God into us. No booms of thunder had sent us sprawling.

But Mother Nature had put on a show for us. She had earned my sense of wonder, and Noah’s too, I think.

I was lucky to see and feel that again. And having a front row seat with your son isn’t bad either.