The Thunder Rolls

The thunder rolls
And the lightnin' strikes
- Garth Brooks

We had our first thunderstorm last night. On rare occasions we get thunder in the winter in Minnesota, but not usually. Last night it woke us up though, and today it's been sleeting against the windows with periodic rumbles of thunder all evening. I love the rain and I love the thunder. It makes you want to hunker down and get all cozy. Pull up a blanket, make sure the doors are all shut tight against the elements, and snuggle up. And I look forward to the first real rain of spring. Even though it makes for a cold, gray, dreary day, it also washes away all the lingering snow and helps to nourish the fragile green plants that are trying to push through the dead brown remains of fall. Two days ago was the official start of spring. You can hear the birds - loudly - when you go outside now. Next will be the buds bursting forth, then the green shoots of grass, then the lilacs. My lilacs are especially important to me. One year for my birthday, my husband's grandmother gave me $100 for my birthday. Living on a single income as we were, that was an incredible amount of money. I chose to buy lilac bushes with it.

I had always wanted to get married in May and have a bouquet of lilacs. But because my in-laws could more easily come up for Christmas and stay for a January wedding than a May wedding, we accommodated them and January it was. And to this day, I regret it. There have been so many years we just don't go out to celebrate our anniversary because it is just too cold, and I didn't have the wedding I always dreamed of, getting married in January instead of May. The colors weren't right, the flowers weren't right, the ceremony wasn't right. I wish I'd been the kind of bride who stomps her foot and says, "No! It's MY wedding and this is what I want!" But that's not me. Sigh. So buying lilacs was also sort of symbolic. It was money from my in-laws to buy the wedding flowers (or at least the bushes that would grow the wedding flowers) that I never had. And then my neighbor decided to cut them down.

I was looking out over my back yard from my upper patio window and could swear that the bushes looked like they had been trimmed all along one side. I stared at them in disbelief for the longest time before calling my husband to ask if he had cut them. No, he said. But it was obvious they had been cut -- they were just sheared off all along my neighbor's side, a neighbor that many people in the neighborhood had had difficulties with in the past. I was just floored to think someone would do this. Unfortunately for my neighbor, she called just then to ask if she could borrow a cup of sugar. And the words just spilled out..."What the hell did you cut my lilac bushes for?" She immediately went on the defensive. "They were hanging into our yard and you weren't trimming them so we did." And had we been told this was a problem for them? Nooooooo! I was beside myself. I insisted my husband go talk to them. "Me!?! Why me?" You're perfectly good at sticking up for yourself," he said. "You go talk to them if you're upset." I told him he should go talk to them and put all his years of debate to good use. We went back and forth. My husband did try to go talk to them, and they actually tried to dodge him when he'd go over there--by hiding in the garage or not answering their door.

He did finally catch them at home and talk to them about it, explaining that if they had a problem with it, they needed to talk to us, not wait til we're out of town and then just go chop them down, and that these were special to me and that I've gone out of my way to be neighborly to them when no one else will. The conversation didn't go very far. It's been about 4 or 5 years and they still haven't spoken to us. But at least my lilacs have rebounded and seem to be doing okay. Thank goodness.

On a sleepless night
As the storm blows on
Out of control
Deep in her heart
The thunder rolls