Day of Calamity!

Bruno's first (Brazilian) Father's Day was memorable, to say the least...not only for his time spent with Nicky, but- unfortunately- also for a trip to the Emergency Room and the near-decimation of our garden by a freak hailstorm!! Bruno injured his left thumb while building the workshop and the cut was severe enough to require stitches (see above). Not exactly a day of fishing and cold beers! We returned home at around 6:30 pm, remarking on the storm clouds one valley over from ours. Around 45 min. later, amidst tentative thunder and lightning, huge hail started to POUR from the sky for around 20 minutes! It was so loud we couldn't go out on the porch. The ground was covered with ice, and some larger accumulations, like where it slid off the roof, remain today! The temperature fell around 15 degrees! My goodness, it was like nothing I have ever seen! Leaves were flying from the sky, and today the whole lawn is covered with shredded leaves, and many trees look denuded. How sad! And worst of all is our garden. The tomatoes are bruised, the sunflowers have holes in the leaves, my gorgeous pepper plants are naked, the squash have NO leaves left at all, the corn is in ribbons... aye... we are hoping, if the sun ever warms up this weird August world, that our plants will regenerate. But it is very late in the season, and it's somewhat unlikely, as the plants were nearly mature and producing vegetables and fruit. Hopefully our tomatoes will still be able to ripen, and our sunflowers bloom!

Still, this odd Dia dos Pais offers us an important lesson: the work of a whole season may be lost in minutes... Our lives, and all that we enjoy and love, are very fragile and brief. Even a notion as simple and common as this can rattle you to your core when it becomes real, present, tangible. It makes me think about how Nicholas, so small and vibrant, so beautiful, and in many senses the culmination of our lives, is also so fragile, and so precious. It's urgent we keep perspective and treasure our time together; the trajectory of our lives may take us in unexpected directions.