It was a dark and stormy night...

Everybody has those prominent memories in their childhood; their first kiss, their first beer, the first car they totaled. Was that just a me memory? Whatever. 

One of my early memories recently resurfaced. ADHD is one of those wonderful things where I can forget a lot of things, but sometimes then a spectrum disorder likes to also rear its head and just store it away in a file in a different drive. I might call that my "A-Drive," maybe not though. I digress.

It was a dark, and stormy night. I'm not kidding. The family was driving north through the dark forests of upstate New York to visit the family's cabin. I was under the age of 5. I remember waking up in the back of the family station wagon. A brilliantly faded "Tobacco Tooth" yellow American sedan. It was the chic-family vehicle before the Dodge Caravan showed up and continues to not go away. 

I was jostled by a bump from the car. There was as distant lowing of thunder. I rubbed my eyes to clear away some of the crusted sleepies. All of a sudden a brilliant, red flash lit up the sky. Colors I had not seen in the night sky before. Immediately after, a deafening crack filled the air, filling my toddler body with fear. I recoiled only briefly, and turned
my eyes to the sky to see a red streak through the sky, not white or a pale blue hue, but crimson red. 

Red lightning, illuminating the blacked out, night sky. Invigorating, but calming. In the three decades since that night, I have not encountered lightning that color since, although every storm I look for it. Hoping to see such a sight again.