I woke at 6:30, my head both fuzzy from sinus pressure, and abuzz with thoughts, stories, ideas. This is unusual as I’m not a morning person, and doubly so as I went to bed around 3:00.

My first action, since both dogs were still snoring, was to grab my laptop from it’s usual location on the bedside table, and as I was doing so, there was a flash under the blinds. I passed it off as an illusion – the reflection from the VAIO insignia on the top cover of the laptop – but then it happened again.

Straining my ears, I listened past the white noise of the humidizer we keep running in the bedroom, and head the gentle rolling rumblings of morning thunder. (Morning Thunder, btw, used to be a flavor of Celestial Seasonings tea .) Closing my eyes, I listened as the reverberations crescendoed and decrescendoed, ebbing and flowing like the ocean breaking over a slick rock jetty.

The dogs sensed that I was alert, or heard the thunder, and asked to go out, and so we did, the three of us, and I stood on the back deck and let the first few drops of October rain sniff my hair and kiss my skin, while I mused that the sky was not black or dark, at all, but seemed to be endless layers of lavender tulle.

I sent a silent prayer into the universe – a healing, quenching, balming sort of request – and padded barefoot back to bed, my canine entourage circling my ankles as I walked.

When the early alarm went off, I kissed Fuzzy, and told him to sleep another hour.
And I remain awake, drinking in the natural magic of light, sound, and rain.