Rain, at last!

It's raining, at last. You could smell it coming. That earthy, loamy, heavy scent, and then the patter that turns into buckets, back to patter, and then suddenly we can see the mountains again. Guatemala has been getting all the rain this season, if you follow the news. It has been very bad. Here we've just been getting the clouds skirting by with rock-the-house thunder and lightening. What has started ever so slowly this year, the greening of Huatulco, will speed up rapidly in the next couple of days.

Flamboyant trees are blooming here now

I love the thunder and lighting here. I didn't grow up with much thunder and lightening...the San Francisco Bay Area was rainy, but those currents just didn't bump into each other enough there. Every storm here is accompanied by thunder and lightening. Larry grew up with great storms, being from the midwest and all. When Larry and I were in Wisconsin a few years ago, we did have a siting of a tornado. There was some thunder and lightening. We were in West Bend, visiting his sister, Ellen. We were ushered to the basement, but kept running upstairs to see the storm. Big fun. But for me, here in Mexico, the storms just bring a different dimension to the beauty. Unless we go to hurricane level, I do enjoy a good storm. (Last nearby hurricane was 12 years ago, Paulina, but plenty of tropical storms.)

I saw my first Mexico thunder-lightening storm in Acapulco, like 45 years ago; I was dancing with a medical student from Mexico City (a huge crush at the time) on the terrace of a fancy hotel (for then), the lightening was flashing rapidly across Acapulco Bay. It was like daylight. I fell in love with Mexico on that trip--the beginning of a life-long love affair with this country. What was wrong with me. I should have moved here then. But it's all ok now, we've got lightening on the bay, a great guy to share it with, and a cat who can't bury herself deep enough into the bed sheets when the thunder starts rolling.

Luckily tonight the rain came at sunset. Pink, black, flashes of light, glimpses of sky turning gray between the clouds. The lightening seems to pass right in front of the house, sideways, sparkin'. The thunder indeed shakes the house. Centa is running into the bedroom, then coming out to see what is happening between lightening strikes. She can't decide if she wants to be with us watching or hiding. So we are full of hope that the rain will now start to come more frequently. I missed the green, the insect and frog sounds that come with the rain, and the smell of the forest filling the spaces of our lives.