“Gray skies are gonna clear up…” sang Tony Bennett. I’m sure they will but there have been quite a lot of gray skies lately and in the midst of the storms, sometimes it’s hard to realize that beyond the clouds, the skies are blue.
Clouds have always fascinated me. As a child, my family and I watched storm clouds approach, anxious to know whether they might carry the makings of a tornado. I’ve seen the sky grow gray and nearly black; I’ve seen it take on the dark green color of a bruise; I’ve seen it gray rimmed with white or gray-black with a decided orange hue. Skies like these bear watching. I’ve also seen a tornado high in the clouds but thankfully, it didn’t drop down. It looked like a finger that pointed earthward, withdrew into the clouds and then pointed again.
Where I grew up, trees and hills crowded around. It was hard to see the clouds until they were almost overhead. Not so in the plains areas of Oklahoma and Texas. My sister and brother-in-law and I had a running joke. If Texas needed rain, they would invite me to come for a visit because almost every time I visited them, rain either paved the way or followed close behind.
One memorable time my husband and I were going to visit Helen and Ray in Texas. There was no problem seeing the sky. Trees were scarce but the sky was visible from horizon to horizon and in front and behind and, like everything in Texas, it looked mighty big!
We knew rain was in the forecast but we didn’t know tornadoes were. The closer we got to my sister’s house, the darker the sky became. I wanted to turn around and go the other way but we were driving straight into it. Scary! Rain pelted and pounded, and wind battered the car but we kept driving. Finally, the clouds blew elsewhere. As we drove through a small Texas town before arriving at our destination, we saw broken fence posts, store signs that were dangling, store front glasses broken out. A small tornado had touched down just before we drove through. What a welcome! Anyway, I’m glad we missed it.
Clouds are fascinating and usually, summer clouds are fluffy, friendly-looking and non-threatening. As a child, I remember lying on my back in the grass and watching the clouds form shapes of animals.
Many years ago, I sent a poem about cloud animals to Dr. Fitzhugh Dodson, child psychologist and the author of many books on parenting. He included it in his gook, Give Your Child a Head Start in Reading. By the way, it’s still on Amazon. I checked. The poem is on page 113, if you’re looking.
“Don’t know why there’s no sun up in the sky,” Lena Horne sang in Stormy Weather. During a time of wind, too much rain, and hail, it seems like the sun has deserted the sky, but it’s still there. And one of these days soon, it’ll shine again.
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