Snapshot of a Sunday Morning

I write this in the aftermath of a thunderstorm that just passed over St. Charles. It’s eleven a.m. on Sunday, the day before Memorial Day, and outside it’s as dark as about eight-thirty or nine at night. Some twenty minutes ago a huge crack like a gunshot sounded practically on our doorstep; as witnessed by my brother, who was sitting on the front porch with a cup of coffee at the time, it was actually across the street. Lightning struck a towering ash tree in front of our neighbor’s house. Conner spilled his coffee. The upper half of the tree is now bent at a 30° angle, but we can’t figure out if we’re just noticing the angling now or if it is indeed new, a casualty of the storm. We're not sure. Our collective memory is of absolutely no use.

By now the storm has given way to regular rain, though it’s still dark. Rain on Sundays is as welcome as sun on Memorial Days: very. Sunday mornings are fit for an hour with the newspaper. The two newspapers my family subscribes to are littering the living room. Little Rod Blagojevich heads are everywhere. This morning, I suggested to Conner that he check out the work of Gil Scott-Heron after reading the poet's obit in the Chicago Tribune—he nodded over the comics. I’ll probably spend most of the rest of this day reading.

Update: my parents have inspected the tree and they say it shows visible scarring, leading me to imagine God shooting a tree. Thunder is still rumbling in the distance. Now it appears to be getting darker. The rain is becoming torrential again …