Lights exploding – in crashes and booms – woke us to the storm early Monday morning. It wasn't one of those polite climatic conversations where lightning flashes and thunder responds, and they give each other room to breathe and you can tell whose turn it is next all the way through.

This was a tirade of electricity, a torrent of blinking lights. The blasts were so fast your eyes couldn't adjust. They rained down without rest.

The flood of water, by contrast, was steady. It soaked every thirsty place.

By daylight, the air was clean and cool, the kind that begs you to come out and walk.

Taking stock of the post-storm world reminded me of my family.

For every lightning-zapped tree – some of which will snap in two, taking out a whole house or car with them; others that escape with just a slice of their skin peeled off, which time will probably heal – there are dozens of flowers that lay in wait, heads bent and faces hidden, until the quiet aftermath gives them a way to bloom.

http://maypops.wordpress.com/2012/08/07/after-2/