The After

There is calm before the storm as well as after. In a time when all I want to do, we want to do is go outside, it’s not easy during a thunderstorm. It is almost a cruel joke to have a storm in Texas during a quarantine when every other year the state would be in a drought. The one time Texans don’t wish for rain we get it. Hours stretch longer, and mood drops even further into a grey abyss than before; but when the storm is over, I can’t help but want another one if it means the sky takes on a face like it did in the picture. From inside my house, the windows filled with orange light that seemed to beckon an audience to see the aftermath of the chaos that was raining down upon our home not thirty minutes earlier.

Of course I wasn’t disappointed when I left my doorstep. Every surface was washed with rain. Pools of water were in the street, on cars, and in pots; droplets were on windows, petals, leaves, blades of grass. The air wasn’t humid yet, allowing me to breath in the ozone the storm had left behind. I had the urge to play in the rain, and had it still be falling, I would. The echoes of rain were still dripping off the sides of roofs, fences, and street lamps. Usually at this hour, eight in the evening, there would countless of neighbors walking, and taking advantage the cooled weather, but not now. There were no people out. Not even cars splashing to their destinations were breaking the tranquility. I felt peace in the moment. This scene I can only imagine happening if I was in the presence of a scene of untouched snow. A moment of awe and wonder.

The best part of this “after” was the very sky that gave us the storm in the first place. Looking south were the clouds responsible for all of this. The further they were the darker they became, carrying their natural chaos within. As the clouds came north towards my home the lighter and thinner they became until just above me the sky breaks in to sunset. A clear cut (or as much as you can cut clouds) of the storm clouds from the rest of the sky. I think seeing the edge of a storm can never be not amazing to see in person. It’s one thing seeing a radar of the storm and its departure, and completely another thing seeing it in person.

The rain had stopped just in time for the sky to be painted from its natural state to a blue canvas with streaks of peach touching earth at random, a splat of orange on the edge of view, and spots of lavender to shade the clouds from underneath. The chunks of clouds that had broken off from the storm front were also dyed sunset colors as if they were Easter eggs, each painted slightly different. The splat of orange being the sun, rested just beyond the line of houses putting anything resting in front of them into an eerie shadow even as I looked up at the light blue piece of sky giving off what’s left of its daylight. My neighborhood could easily have been set in a post-apocalyptic movie. In a sense it was, if you considered the storm the apocalypse and the after math the beginning anew.

I don’t know why in that moment I felt so giddy and in awe of what I saw, but being all alone on the outside, I couldn’t help but smile and just be happy. Only after spinning around, taking in all angles of this sky, the air, the moment, did I come out of the stupor long enough to take a picture of the majesty, capturing a fragment of what was, hopefully not all in my mind, actually happening.