On a spring day in 1950, when I was big enough to run about on my own two legs yet still small enough to ride in my father’s arms, he carried me onto the porch of a farmhouse in Tennessee and held me against his chest, humming, while thunder roared and lightning flared and rain sizzled around us. On a spring day just over twenty years later, I carried my own child onto the porch of a house in Indiana to meet a thunderstorm, and then, after thirty more years, I did the same with my first grandchild. Murmuring tunes my father had sung to me, I held each baby close, my daughter, Eva, and then, a generation later, her daughter, Elizabeth, and while I studied the baby’s newly opened eyes I wondered if she felt what I had felt as a child cradled on the edge of a storm— the tingle of a power that surges through bone and rain and everything.
~ Scott Russell Sanders, A Private History of Awe
Image: Suzanne with a Little Part of You
Thanks David.
i felt a bit of it just reading this. wonderful. blood is indeed thicker than water from the skies.
Yes.
A precious memory to pass on.
It’s moments like these we want to remember and share.
My mother did the same thing to us and I passed it on to my children.
Lucky you Rachel!
So touching. Thank you for this moment.
It is Peg. Thank you.
Thank you for reminding me of what is important.
Thank you Julie. I was equally moved.
Could smell the ozone in the air and feel the fierce love coursing between generations….
“Coursing” – that’s it. You did it again. You did.
The photo…
The whole universe does fit in our hands.
Beautiful.
It is Sawsan. Amazing. Miracles.
Loving connection and touch sparked by nature’s powerful energy…. and I thought sitting under the veranda holding hands in a thunder storm was pretty special. This is a wonder-filled moment to cherish forever.
It is Val. I could feel his moments.
This makes me think of the day when my daughter and I brought her daughter, her first born, to the ocean on the north shore of Massachusetts. Something holy about these rituals, isn’t there?
Holy, that’s the word. Exactly.
tender sweet.