Hail No!

This morning the sky looked so spooky and I loved it so much. The streetlights were still glowing orange at 8 am. To the Northwest a cloud shelf hung low over the horizon and it was clear and bright under/beyond it but smoky, ominous grey/black/yellow/orange everywhere else. As I stood outside my guest room sliding glass door at Grandma’s house, feet in the cold grass engrossed in the colors, it suddenly hailed, hard, for a quick 2 minutes. Tapioca ball sized hail.

Grandma yelled from her throne, her spot on the couch in the center of the house which she spent more and more time in these days: “how big?”

I yelled back, “I’m bringing some in for you!” I collected a handful and ran it to her. She giggled all giddy as I put it all melts into her hand. She was sooo tickled. “Oh, it’s soooo cute.” She squealed, not unlike a toddler would be holding a hail nuggets in awe and wonder, but with the feeling of not having seen or touched it in ever, but in a long time. Her eyes totally sparkled. She mentioned with her knobby, folded hand, “it’s from going back up and down and up and down and so on.” I flashed back to elementary school and realized she’s totally right, that I hadn’t thought about how hail forms since I first learned it. That’s how hail freezes, it can’t decide whether it should go up or down until it’s heavy enough to fall. I figure her long life in the heartland, growing up on a farm way back when horses still pulled the plows, meant she knew a lot more about weather than I ever had to.

I take the cold, melting hail balls back and call for her kitty, Kitty. Like a treat. “Kitty! You want some hail?!” Grandma looks at me like I’m so ridiculous for messing with Kitty in this way.

“Hail no she doesn’t,” Grandma says. We both snicker.