Nachamu Ami,
Part One, The Storm

Maria let her face grin the biggest smile you can ever give without revealing braces or the teeth behind them. And she stood looking at her mom.

“I will never forget that hug,” I remarked about the previous night.

“Don’t expect it every time.” Her eyes as well as her body quickly rolled away from me.

For a split second she stood in her “Maria way,” her chin up too high, back arched, arms stiff at her side.Then she went to fix her breakfast on a September day that stayed dry. Thank God.

For three consecutive days over 20 inches(51 centimeters) of rain flooded Georgia counties far north of us. In our area a mere four inches(10 centimeters) fell in a few hours. That deluged night my hairdresser’s son chose not to drive into his apartment complex. The paved entryway had a huge dip filled with water covering the hood of an unoccupied car.

Our family stayed dry in our Deep South home that sits on a rise. Storm waters channeled from the roof into gutters, down the slope to street drains, and then underground pipes. The pipes gushed into a manmade lake behind homes across the street, a lake my Maria can view through bottlebrush pine and pecan trees. Those tall trees canopy great shade during the day. But one nearby tree became the lightning rod that sparked fear that singular night.

Earlier that night Buddy checked all the locks, shut blinds, and the main lights. Sister Watchdog made sure he took his seizure medicine, before she hurried upstairs to draw her drapes. Both tried to sleep. But no light blocking drapes can block the lightning blast flashes that interrupted the hiss of constant rain.

In our backroom the red digits of the clock warned it was an hour and a half to midnight. Thanks to a DVR, the TV, and two T. Edison’s incandescent bulb lamps, we parents could wind down before hitting the pillows. So we hoped.

Boom! Scientists say you can calculate how far away lightning strike is by counting the seconds between your sight of a flash and the first rumble you hear of its thunder. To calculate the miles one divides the number of seconds by five. To calculate the kilometers one divides by three.

We didn’t see the flash to figure out how far away the lightning bolted in our backyard. The boom plunged us into darkness. My laser eyes searched the dark and found a pinprick of light from a battery backed up alarm panel. Then they ferreted out a blue glow in the hall. The nightlight was on!

MBH hustled to flip two circuit breakers. Adult voices and feet echoed in the stairwell. One voice spilled sentence after sentence in a tight pitch that tugged this momma’s heartstrings.

“It’s okay, honey,” I yelled, hurrying to stand outside the blacked out room. In the backdrop of a lit stairs, Bud followed his dad while Maria ran to me. My Maria ran to me! She let her head fall onto my shoulder as she wrapped her arms about me. Stroking her hair, it felt as soft as her frame, not one ounce of stiffness . . . as she yielded herself to a parent-child comforting embrace.

In the floods of this temporal time and space, as you grope for light in the gloom, in the loss of control, in the angst of terror, a calm parent stands ready. With eyes, ears, arms, and every fiber of a parent's will wide open towards YOU, a Parent longs for you. Long suffering he waits on you to come, to yield to an eternal embrace.

Embrace the Parent whose words,
penned long ago in Hebrew,
speak for all time:
“Comfort, comfort ye my people.”