April 9, 2021. Madison, Mississippi. The Storm.

I had never heard such a racket. Now the house is quiet and I can hear only rain but for the last couple of hours all I could hear was the storm. The thunder was loud and very close. The lightning and the thunder came almost at the same time. And it was so loud I jumped. Then came the hail. It pounded on the windows and the skylights and seemed to go on for ages. No telling what happened to the car. I was wishing I could have put the car into the garage. The storm was so loud I could not hear the Tv so I turned up the volume high. I was watching a movie about Oliver Sachs on PBS, a series called American Masters. I had read some of Oliver's books years ago but knew little about his life, which I found fascinating. He was the first neurologist who used L Dopa for Parkinson's patients. He wrote The Awakenings, which was turned into a movie. I kept hoping that the electricity would not fail ecause I wanted to watch to the end. I kept a flashlight in my pocket just in case. But we did not get dark. Now I am enjoying the quiet of the rain, which I normally think is noisy. Mississippi storms are intense but this last one seemed the loudest. I of course was sitting in the TV room surrounded by windows which is probably not the smartest place to be with lightning flashing all around me. I survived and now the sorm has moved on. But it was quite an experience.