Lightening and Thunder

The lightening woke others last night. They said it was so bright they thought someone had a spotlight and was shining it in their windows. And then the thunder came afterward, reverberating; it seemed, many times after the lightening.

I slept though it which is typical for me.

Today I enjoyed the aftermath, the gravel road, wet from the rain that followed the pyrotechnics in the sky. Betty and Alice joined Doral and Rebecca on our walk. I was afraid the children could not keep up with us and was prepared to take them back, but no, they skipped joyfully ahead of us, Betty at one point reaching down to test the wet brown earth to see if it was stable enough to take her weight.

Alice ran straight for a puddle. I thought that was going to be the end of dry shoes for her. She had chosen the side puddle beside it, really two puddles, and she hopscotched on the country road, missing the water and still running ahead. I didn’t think much about what the girls were doing as they laughed and skipped until I saw what I thought was a collision between the two of them, with Alice landing on her left side, full length in one of the brown puddles.

I ran to pick her up and used my shirt to dry off her leggings, her arm, the drips of water on her face, and the tears in her eyes. Rebecca said that she was afraid Alice had broken her wrist. I didn’t even think of that. I just knew she needed to get back to her mother, to her home and change into dry clothes.

All the way to the cabin she was rehearsing how the accident had happened. She was jumping over a puddle, her left leg high and the right one still on the ground. At that moment Betty stepped on Alice’s right foot and pined it to the ground, also falling against Alice, so Alice had no way to stabilize the shove she felt from Betty, and Alice landed in the puddle.

All of the way back home as we hurried along to get into dry clothes, Alice’s description of the accident kept tumbling out of her mouth, adding this new piece and that, showing me the gravel rash on her left arm and crying about the shock of the fall.

I dropped Alice off at home so that her mom could take care of drying Alice out and I joined the walkers again, this time as we strode toward Glen’s house. We made one side loop back to see where Alice had fallen, and Betty could identify all of the puddles along the way, knowing which ones were just the right size to jump over. Other puddles were to be avoided. Betty even knew the exact location of the puddle accident, although I could not have identified it.

Betty is always clipping her sunglasses to the front of her dress.
At one point in the walk she called us to stop, saying she had
lost her sunglasses.  But there they were, still clipped to her
dress, although he has been hopping and skipping and dipping low
to touch the heads of snails along the road.  She should have lost
the sunglasses but hadn't.

The walkers dropped Rebecca off at the Pilling’s kiln. Betty saw the wood that has been stacked at the side of Glen and Janet’s house.

 “Wow, look at those bricks,” Betty said.

I loved the purple clematis that is growing at the side of the garage and told Betty I would take a picture of her there, as well.

She stood beside it for her pose.

You can see the headband that she always wears.

When asked about it, she says that it makes her into a princess, so it rarely comes off of her.

There is an accident waiting to happen in the photo.

She is standing by a rake, the claw of which is close to her foot.

When the picture is over, she steps on the rake claw that is between her feet and the handle hits her in the head, Laurel and Hardy style.

Over she goes.

I pick her up and explain how that accident happened.

I think to myself, this is the universe, giving her a knock because she had shoved Alice in the puddle only minutes before.

Arta