(Excerpt from my childhood)

…“It’s raining! It’s raining!” I shout gleefully “Can we go play in the rain Mamma?!”

    “Let’s go!” Mamma stands up with Sarah as the next song starts and she boogies over to the door singing “If you got the money honey, I got the time!”

    Mama opens the door and Stephen jumps from the top step with his towel cape flying behind him and I stand on the second step holding my face up to the sun and the rain to enjoy this “sun shower’ before leaping into it. Mamma and Sarah join us on the grass and we dance around in the spring rain that smells like orange blossoms from the grove next to our trailer. It seems the sun shower is about to fizzle out but then Mamma shouts, “Wooo! Woo woo woo!” and starts popping her mouth with her left hand and nodding her head up and down and rhythmically tapping first one and then the other of her bare feet on the wet ground. “Wooo! Woo woo woo! Woo! woo woo woo!” She continues this as she begins to move in a circle and Stephen and I follow suit when we realize that she is doing her “Indian rain dance”.

    “Woo woo woo woo!”  we are all dancing following Mamma in a slow circle. We kids start to improvise and make this dance our own.  I add a few spins to my my dance first one direction and then the other and Stephen adds his own rain call which is a higher pitched vocalization after about every third set of 4 woos.  We all have our heads back calling up to the clouds requesting more rain and it works as usual. Soon we are all drenched by a cool downpour as the deluge starts in earnest. I love the cleansing rain and am so happy that Mamma decided to dance up a storm. We break from the circle and all dance around the yard catching raindrops in our mouths until thunder starts to rumble across the sky. Lightning flashes in the distance and we all know that signals a temporary end to our outside dancing and we head straight for the door. The wind picks up and as Mamma opens the door it is snatched from her hand and slams into the trailer making us all squeal and laugh. As we get inside Mamma turns off the radio and tells us to take off our wet clothes and then wraps each of us in a towel and plops us in a row on the couch.

    “Now be still and be quiet. Daddy will be home soon and I am fixing to start supper. You know lightning is attracted to loud kids and wiggle worms.”

    We definitely know that. We sit still and quiet listening to the thunder as it really starts to boom. The lightning keeps flashing so bright I start to see spots. It’s like God has the flashbulb attachment on his Polaroid and we are posing for Him. Stephen is on one end of the couch and I’m on the other with Sarah wide-eyed in the middle.

     I whisper to Sarah, “It’s okay Sarah, the lightning will leave us alone if we are very quiet and don’t move.” I lean back against the cushion and monitor the storms sounds as it ratchets up and then starts to wind down almost as quickly as it started. I’m starting to feel pretty sure that we are going to be safe and my eyes are beginning to feel heavy. Mixed in with the rumbling thunder are sounds of  Mamma opening and closing the icebox and of her getting out pots and pans. The smell of Mamma’s cooking wafts from the kitchen as the thunderstorm sounds further and further away outside and I fall asleep right there wrapped in a towel like a caterpillar in a cocoon.

~ Kiddo