Booming Darking – “I recall the moment when my first daughter, by this time an adult living in her own home next door to mine, and I were in the midst of a raging thunderstorm of a magnitude far greater than either of us could recall from our childhoods.
My first recollection of a thunderstorm dates back to 1954; I was four years old. I recall sitting wedged tightly between our hard, black vinyl sofa and the big picture window in the living room of our home in Bountiful, Utah. With one cheek of my bottom balanced wobbly on the edge of the sofa back and the other creased against the thin window ledge, I sat motionless, exhilarated and frightened at the same time. I couldn’t move a muscle or break the suction created by my open lips and hands pressing hard against the windowpane. My eyelids were glued open as my eyes grew enormous staring at the gigantic thunderstorm stretched, displaying its raw fury, as far as I could see in all directions. The horizon appeared to be the origin of this mysterious alchemy. From this giant cauldron boiled an intoxicating brew from which spewed light and sound the likes of which I had never experienced. I froze there terrified to my toes until a tug from behind jarred me away with a warning to stay clear of the window.
In 1979, I repeated my mother’s warning to my own little girl as she watched a thunderstorm approaching out our dining room window in our home near Puget Sound. Her babblings were incoherent as she pressed her pointed finger to the glass, her almond-shaped eyes bigger than I had ever seen them before. Early the next morning, while the air was damp and exhausted from its tumultuous night, my daughter came running toward me charged with energy and emotion. She was clutching the morning newspaper in her chubby little arms, shouting the same unfamiliar incantation she had chanted during the storm. Flopping the paper on my lap she pointed to a picture below the headlines on the front page of the Seattle Times yelling, “Mommy, Mommy, BOOMING DARKING, BOOMING DARKING!” An electrifying bolt of lightning ripped a narrow jagged swath through the black photograph from top to bottom. I was instantly transported back in time to my own childhood experience. It was exhilarating to relive and share her wild excitement.” – Moments Contributor L.E.Erickson
