squishing mud through my toes

Tonight after supper I went out on the deck and saw an amazing storm headed our way. The sky was yellow/orange with fast-moving black clouds. Since it is a Sunday night (a night that I usually spend savoring some quiet moments before the start of the week), I decided to go to the front of the house on our little porch and watch the storm roll in.

It started off with the cliché “quiet before the storm.” Not a leaf on any tree was moving. The birds had even stopped their singing. It’s like Mother Nature was saying to herself “okay! Hold on to your hats! This is going to be a big one!” But the stillness only lasted about a minute…then we noticed the leaves started moving in the tree tops…. then everything was rocking and swaying.

The thunder and lightening were amazing but it wasn’t scare-you-out-of-your-socks thunder and lightening. The rain started coming down in huge drops and then it gave up on the huge drops and just started coming down in sheets.

The smell of the rain was delicious. It wasn’t the smell of worms that you smell after the storm, it was a fresh green sweet smell.

As the rain continued coming down in torrents, it was creating little rivers on both sides of the street.

And that’s when it happened…. a childhood memory literally swept me away in the current of these little rivers.

When I was about 5 years old we lived in West Chicago, Illinois. After summer storms, all of the neighbor kids would run outside and play in these little rivers along the sides of the streets. I distinctly remember the feeling of the warm rain water running over my feet.

Oh, but the part that I loved the very most was the mud at the bottom of these little rivers. Squishing that mud between my toes was the best feeling in my whole wide 5 year old world. It’s weird that I’m now 51 and my toes still tingle at the memory of the oooey-gooey mud slipping through them.

I looked around and didn’t see any neighbors out and about, so as soon as the rain stopped I went out to the street and stuck my feet in the little rivers created by the storm.

But my 51-year-old toes were sorely disappointed. When I was 5 years old, my street didn’t have perfectly planned curbs and drainage thingies that whisked the little rivers and puddles away almost as quickly as the storm made them. And of course there is no mud in the street I live on now. We have street cleaners that come by to sweep up any inkling of dirt.

So, my toes sat there in a tiny little trickle of water flowing over concrete.

If my toes could talk they would have said “what the hell?”

But even though my toes were disappointed, the rest of me thoroughly enjoyed the summer storm from beginning to end.