The White Lily (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thewhitelily) wrote2005-12-08 12:52 pm
thewhitelily) wrote2005-12-08 12:52 pm
Dear Santa...
It’s days like this one that I am reminded why I love living in Queensland so much.
Sometimes, around Christmas, I think it might be nice to live in the northern hemisphere, to live somewhere that gets snow at all – that strange, magical white stuff that I’ve only seen two or three times in my life. About half an hour ago, making a snowman, and all the freezing and chattering teeth that involves, would have sounded like heaven.
It’s been stinking hot all day – in fact it’s been stinking hot all week, with the temperature maximums upwards of 35C (95F), humidity approaching 100%, and only dropping down to around 27C (80F) overnight. Usually, this kind of weather’s broken every afternoon by a storm which helps bring the temperature down to a bearable level for the evening – usually perfectly timed at around half-past three to saturate children on the way home from school. Even without the drought, we hardly ever get “rainy days” or “wet weeks” here – a storm comes, pelts down six inches of rain within half an hour, then disappears without a trace – but now the storms that make the scorching weather bearable are few and far between.
Today, at long last, one came.
It’s late for a storm, but the sun is still up, so the clouds are luminescent, only barely touched with silvery-grey among the white despite the fact that the rain is bucketing down so thickly that I can hardly even see the back garden. The cats have gone absolutely mad. They’re crouching at one window until a gust of wind carries some raindrops onto them and then rearing away to dash over to a different one, the bells on their necks ringing frantically as they try to be involved in the spectacle and remain dry at the same time.
I think that our street’s transformer has been struck by lighting, because the power is out – which means I have absolutely no guilt for procrastinating over these dresses I’m meant to be making, because I need power to run my sewing machine. (Although fortunately, my laptop has plenty of battery!)
Last year, not long after we bought our house, we had one of the most violent storms I’ve ever seen – it came and went during the course of about ten minutes, bringing down four trees on our property. Four. We only had five trees to start with! Fortunately they’d all fallen outwards: one into the neighbor’s yard, bringing down their clothesline but handily missing their shed and the fence between us; one completely blocking the two-lane road; and two that weren’t tall enough to destroy much more than my vegetable garden.
But, while I’ll admit that power loss is inconvenient around dinner time, and the occasional destruction is heartbreaking, there’s just something captivating, something magnificent, something awesome about the way the roads have suddenly turned to rivers; the thunder not so much clapping as constantly roaring, punctuated every now and then by an earthshakingly massive bellow; the trees bending nearly in half with the force of the wind as each new gust makes you wonder if this is the one that will make them snap like a dry twig; the lightning flashing across the whole sky in exact synchrony with the thunder and knowing that means it’s right on top of you; the rain gushing out of the gutters in torrents or hurling itself directly at the ground with enough force to knock you breathless even before it drenches you.
There’s nothing else I want to do during one of these storms but sit near the windows, staring out at the spectacle, breathing the rain-thick air and just feeling it. Nothing, except perhaps to go outside and join in the fun, to caper around like a mad thing, soaked to the skin but oh, so alive!
Ten minutes later, the storm’s over, the power’s been restored, and I can only hear the half-hearted patter of residual rain on the roof and the distant rumble of thunder. I can literally see the plants swelling as they try to suck in and hoard every bit of moisture they can hold in previously wilted leaves, soon to be followed by new flushes of flowers and leaves. The clouds have completely dispersed and the newly revealed sun is starting to set in a sky made up of transparent wisps of cloud against deep blues and pinky-oranges. By Saturday, everything will be violently green, and by Monday it’ll be turning crispy brown once more as the sun bakes away every last drop of moisture.
This is what Christmas is meant to be. Who would want a white Christmas? Who would ever want freezing cold, wet, irritating snow?
I’d just like another storm for Christmas, please.
Sometimes, around Christmas, I think it might be nice to live in the northern hemisphere, to live somewhere that gets snow at all – that strange, magical white stuff that I’ve only seen two or three times in my life. About half an hour ago, making a snowman, and all the freezing and chattering teeth that involves, would have sounded like heaven.
It’s been stinking hot all day – in fact it’s been stinking hot all week, with the temperature maximums upwards of 35C (95F), humidity approaching 100%, and only dropping down to around 27C (80F) overnight. Usually, this kind of weather’s broken every afternoon by a storm which helps bring the temperature down to a bearable level for the evening – usually perfectly timed at around half-past three to saturate children on the way home from school. Even without the drought, we hardly ever get “rainy days” or “wet weeks” here – a storm comes, pelts down six inches of rain within half an hour, then disappears without a trace – but now the storms that make the scorching weather bearable are few and far between.
Today, at long last, one came.
It’s late for a storm, but the sun is still up, so the clouds are luminescent, only barely touched with silvery-grey among the white despite the fact that the rain is bucketing down so thickly that I can hardly even see the back garden. The cats have gone absolutely mad. They’re crouching at one window until a gust of wind carries some raindrops onto them and then rearing away to dash over to a different one, the bells on their necks ringing frantically as they try to be involved in the spectacle and remain dry at the same time.
I think that our street’s transformer has been struck by lighting, because the power is out – which means I have absolutely no guilt for procrastinating over these dresses I’m meant to be making, because I need power to run my sewing machine. (Although fortunately, my laptop has plenty of battery!)
Last year, not long after we bought our house, we had one of the most violent storms I’ve ever seen – it came and went during the course of about ten minutes, bringing down four trees on our property. Four. We only had five trees to start with! Fortunately they’d all fallen outwards: one into the neighbor’s yard, bringing down their clothesline but handily missing their shed and the fence between us; one completely blocking the two-lane road; and two that weren’t tall enough to destroy much more than my vegetable garden.
But, while I’ll admit that power loss is inconvenient around dinner time, and the occasional destruction is heartbreaking, there’s just something captivating, something magnificent, something awesome about the way the roads have suddenly turned to rivers; the thunder not so much clapping as constantly roaring, punctuated every now and then by an earthshakingly massive bellow; the trees bending nearly in half with the force of the wind as each new gust makes you wonder if this is the one that will make them snap like a dry twig; the lightning flashing across the whole sky in exact synchrony with the thunder and knowing that means it’s right on top of you; the rain gushing out of the gutters in torrents or hurling itself directly at the ground with enough force to knock you breathless even before it drenches you.
There’s nothing else I want to do during one of these storms but sit near the windows, staring out at the spectacle, breathing the rain-thick air and just feeling it. Nothing, except perhaps to go outside and join in the fun, to caper around like a mad thing, soaked to the skin but oh, so alive!
Ten minutes later, the storm’s over, the power’s been restored, and I can only hear the half-hearted patter of residual rain on the roof and the distant rumble of thunder. I can literally see the plants swelling as they try to suck in and hoard every bit of moisture they can hold in previously wilted leaves, soon to be followed by new flushes of flowers and leaves. The clouds have completely dispersed and the newly revealed sun is starting to set in a sky made up of transparent wisps of cloud against deep blues and pinky-oranges. By Saturday, everything will be violently green, and by Monday it’ll be turning crispy brown once more as the sun bakes away every last drop of moisture.
This is what Christmas is meant to be. Who would want a white Christmas? Who would ever want freezing cold, wet, irritating snow?
I’d just like another storm for Christmas, please.