HOW SUMMER SHOULD BE

I walked out of work and the air was dead. It felt warm against my skin, the stagnant kind of warm that preludes a big storm. The atmosphere makes me feel like the air is yellow. Just as the door swung closed behind me and strike of lightning bolted across the sky followed immediately by long, low rolls of thunder.

This is my favorite part of the summer season.

Heading to my car, my eyes were locked on the sky. The clouds had rolled in, nice and dark and eerie and low. I rolled my windows down and turned the radio off as I drove out of the parking lot and into the street. The stop and go traffic let me watch the storm in my rear view mirror - we were headed in the same direction. The sky ahead of me was light and the sky behind me was dark. It was quickly overtaking the lines of cars.

The vehicles in front of me weren't moving and the lane next to me was clear, and as I went to pull into it I noticed the car behind me had the same thought. It felt like we were in a natural disaster movie - evacuating our town from the impending doom. We all had our windows down and a couple cars over I could hear someone rocking out to Eminem. Storm camaraderie at it's finest.

I pulled into the parking lot just as the rain started to fall. Thunder crashed in the sky again, along with a thousand little flashes of light.

"There's a storm outside!" I called as I ditched my belongings in my bedroom. I didn't even bother to close the door behind me. Kicking off my shoes and throwing my purse on the floor, I raced back out the front door like a six year old who just heard the ice cream truck coming. Erik had already beaten me out the door and together we stood on the deck to watch the lightning dance and listen to the thunder boom.

The storm only continued to get louder as we talked about how this felt like the end of the world - in a giddy, hollywood type of way. And then it started to pour. The sky just opened up and wind started to blow and it all came together in the best possible summer storm you could dream up. The rain beat against the roofs of the other apartment buildings in a way that looks as if it were snow drifting on a mountain. The water pooled in the parking lot, the trees were bending sideways and in the distance we could hear sirens.

I felt like my heart was going to explode. There I was, standing out in the rain, surrounded by thunder and lightning. This is all I ever wanted in life. My skirt was drenched and so was my shirt and hair, but I couldn't have cared less. Erik braved the elements and stood in the middle of the parking lot while the rain soaked him through to the skin.

This is how summer should be spent.

We stood on the balcony and listened to the crashes of thunder and watched for spears of lightning. And soon the rain lightened up and the thunder rolled away and just like that we were back to normal.