Last April, at my home in Milwaukie, I enjoyed one particularly wild and stormy night.  I slept better than I had in weeks that night.  It wasn’t that the storm didn’t wake me; but each time I woke I went back to sleep enjoying the thunder, the wind, and the pounding rain.

My neighbors at the time had two or three tall fir trees in their yard. If those trees had lost their footing in the soil, they might have destroyed one end of the house. That could have been unfortunate for Teddy and me as we slept in the shadow of the firs. But a small group of healthy firs are safer than a lone tree. They entangle their roots and protect each other from the elements.

I relaxed in my bed that night and enjoyed the staccato of fir cones bouncing across the roof, and branches hitting the shingles then rolling toward the ground, or catching in the gutters. The relentless rain, so dreary in daytime, is just a lullaby at night.

A week ago, here in Newberg, we had a small thunderstorm. It wasn’t quite as dramatic as the spring storm, but it was a pleasure.

I was eight years old when I first remember a thunderstorm. My mother came into the bedroom late one night and shook me awake.

“Get up and come with me!” she said,  “I have something to show you.”

On our tiny covered front porch she had set up two chairs.

“I wanted you to see the thunderstorm!” she said.

We sat there, watching lightening fill the night sky. The storm seemed to be directly overhead.  I don’t remember if there was rain.

My mother’s face was lifted to the spectacle over our heads. She was smiling and full of awe. The mental torments she lived with were absent that night. She was happy and she wanted to share it with me.

I think that’s why I still love a storm.