More Funder

I was sitting there, you know, inflagrante whatevero in my bathroom this morning and the errant thought crossed my mind, "I love listening to the rain!" The thought had 0.00000000000237 seconds to envelope me in its cozy, comfy arms before that mommy thing went off and I flew through my business and launched myself into the office to stand there at the door panting--well, panting and contemplating the fact that Squib would have to make his usual trek from his new room in the Big Red House to the Hobbit Hole in THE RAIN. Yes, the rain.

As we all know, rain begats funder. Funder begats stark-raving terror and irrational behavior in the Squiblet. It's actual fact that he can leap a quarter-mile without touching the ground to wrap his tentacular arms and legs around my body if he even whiffs an abundance of ozone. So, I had a dilemma.

Paranoid, over-mothering choice number one: Wake him up at 5:30 a.m. and carry him over to the Hobbit Hole in the (pseudo...never tell him it's pseudo until this passes) safety of my strong, caring embrace and tuck him in my bed before I started to get ready so that I'd not miss him if he called or came through the door and needed me. I'm pretty sure every one of my nine googleplex and ten cells voted this way.

Yes, moms have that many cells. It's a lot. More than average. It's why we get so d***** up in a huff when your dust hits our offspring. When you have that many cells hollering directions at you....well, you listen!!!

Laid back, nurturing, but not paranoid choice number two: Go about business as usual. Buddy and Mimi and Baba are in the Big Red House. I'm out here. The door is now unlocked. If he wants to come out here, then there are several options for him to choose from. Have confidence in his ability to overcome his fear of thunder and, well, precipitation in general.

So, like most mothers, I got in the tub and worried about the whole thing. I was toweling off when I heard the front door fly open and a little white blur landed in my bed buried by my comforter before the door had even stopped slamming.

You see, when I was little, my dad (Buddy) would put lawn chairs out in the front of the garage or on the porch and take me out there with him and we would watch the storm. Yes, I was scared, but I loved the lightning. I liked counting the distance between the flash and the thunder. Of course, most of that time we lived in Oklahoma. If I was going to be anywhere it was going to be attached bodily to my dad. Not everyone has hidey-holes in Oklahoma. In fact, a large number of people don't. We also used to go watch planes take off at the end of the runway...the VERY END...the tarmac end...at Hobby Airport back when there was just a wooden reflective fence to warn the planes. We sat on that. So maybe I have a skewed perspective of safety.

So, dad and I had Squib with us out on the porch of the Big Red House one day while watching a storm roll in over the lake. We were talking about the lightning and counting from the "flash" to the "boom." Then the flash hit right smack in front of us. Squib burst into tears instantly and I scooped him up to take him inside just as fast as my little feet could carry us. Just for motivation, two near strikes seemed to follow us into the Hobbit Hole. He threw back the covers on my bed and dove beneath them and then yanked them over his head. I have to admit....that never happened in all our storm watching years when I was young. Even dad and I were rattled. Dad was screaming from the porch for me to run faster and get inside. So....yeah....I helped create this little funder monster. Squib had gotten over his thunder issues from early childhood. This? Very different.

Later this morning we were all in our various Bible Study classes when the avalanche of rain let loose. It truly was a beautiful thing to hear. I wasn't going to go out and watch it or anything...even I'm not ready to do that again yet. As I left, though, and stood under the car port with Sassy (new person!) a brilliant flash preceded a ground-rattling boom by only a hair of a second. My mommy radar had been pinging for about ten or fifteen minutes already (some of those cells, they do that kind of thing). I knew instantly he'd be fried by that one. About thirty seconds after that hit, my phone rang.

My littlest boy was huddled in his little booster seat in the Toyota with Buddy and Baba with his jacket (fleece for crying out loud, but better for hiding from funder apparently, so he'd chosen it to wear over his t-shirt and shorts) over his head and synched up. He was calling from Buddy's phone to see when exactly I was going to be home so he would know how long he'd have to be under the covers alone. Apparently the only safe spot is my bed. I have to agree with him there, but for entirely different reasons altogether. When I got home, his saucer-sized eyes peeked over the comforter at me and he said, in his typical all-or-nothing style, "I do not wike dis day."

After we agreed we liked donuts (they serve them at church...not the best reason to go, but hey, he's eight), friends, the freedom to write books about dinosaurs, and iPads, then he renegotiated.

"Fine. I wike dis day, but you can not make me wike da funder."

I'll take what I can get.
Scat