Fathers
Day
2002
I bought plane tickets home for Fathers Day this year without telling Dad. Mom was in on it, and we didn't tell him until shortly before I arrived. Hearing "see you in a week and a half, Dad!" over the phone really made his day.
While I was home, they let me play with their marble runs. The more vertical set was a Bargersville flea market special; the ones that are compatible with Duplo blocks I found at the KCET Store of Knowledge a few Christmases back for them. The two sets are not inherently compatible... but I work in a mixed UNIX/Windows computing environment, and told Dad boldly that the marble runs could be integrated, or at least interoperate! And Mom was generous enough to lend me a few marbles from her collection... the blue ones were especially brave Test Marbles who were the first to try out each newly designed piece of the run.
I spent some time one morning out in the backyard barefoot, helping pull weeds. I really miss doing that... the grass in their yard is soft and moist, and the ground was very soft from the recent rain. Puffy clouds chased each other from horizon to horizon, and gusts of wind carried the memory of spring and the humid smells of summer.
We went to the new Indiana State Museum, lunched in the L.S. Ayres Tearoom, and we were able to squeeze in a walk-through of the Chinasaurs exhibit, too; Indianapolis was the exhibit's first stop on its North American tour. We saw movies at both the IMAX there and at the Cinedome at the Indianapolis Childrens Museum. Space Station 3D, Grand Canyon, Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure... wonderful, wonderful stuff. Dad loves the big-screen theaters, and that's what he most wanted to share with me for Fathers Day. We had such a lovely time. Mom and I managed a short trip to the Bargersville flea market that weekend, too.
There was a thunderstorm moving through early one evening... the kind you can see coming toward you across the plain well before the wind shifts and picks up. That's the kind you can feel and smell in the air even before you can really see much of the clouds, but which you can't help but anticipate once you do see the big black towering shapes bearing down inexorably toward you.
The wind was strong enough to knock over some potted plants on the porch when it did arrive, and to send birds careening and fluttering for cover. We sat on the back porch and watched the storm roll in as the first fierce gusts of wind died away and the rain started; the air was moist and warm. Then the wind picked up again, accompanied by a significant chill, and since the rain was driving itself into the porch fairly horizontally, we went inside where it was warmer to listen to the thunder. The electricity browned out briefly when the winds really got strong. The winds didn't last long, and after they passed through, intermittent drizzle half-heartedly rippled the standing puddles from the initial cloudburst.
A few hours later, the storm had passed beyond us, and we watched the butt end of the thunderheads as they determinedly headed off eastward, trailed by nothing but nearly-clear blue sky as clean and bright a blue as you can imagine. The sun came out just in time to hit the back end of the storm from the side, inscribing a brilliant double rainbow from horizon to horizon across the eastern sky. When it started to fade, we turned, and were treated to a cotton-candy sunset, with pinks and oranges and yellows strewn across the blue.
Sometimes I really miss living here. At other times, I remember all the reasons I left. But surrounded by birdsong and green growing things, the majesty of a prairie cloudburst followed by a perfect sunset, the occasional glint of a firefly across the backyard... the intolerance, stupidity, bigotry and sexism I encountered in the community I grew up in, that I did find less of when I moved West into a community where I fit in slightly better, seem to fade away as pittance in the abundance of nature's glory.
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