Tuesday, September 30, 2008

There Be Dragons!




This summer we had quite a few thunderstorms. The Really Really Big kind with the Lightning right off our balcony and the Thunder rattling the building. I Rather enjoyed them. My son did too in that terrifying, teeth rattling way. He was fasinated by them but scared all at once.
One night the storms knocked out power and we sat and watched the lightning by candle light. I asked my husband what stories got told in his family as a kid about what thunder and lightning were. His response was that his Father gave him the explaination that it was the electrical discharge of clouds ect. In other words the mundane scientific stuff that doesn't mean much to a two year old.
So I told my son about the story I got told of as a kid. Thunder was made by the Potatoman dropping his sack of Potatoes in the sky and that's what made the noise. I was probably about 4 or five when i heard it so I reasoned there must be a "Light bulb Man" who dropped his bag of light bulbs and that made the flashes of lightning. Not that I really believed that but they were fun stories that made sense to a young mind.
Then I asked my boy what he thought made all the noise and light. He thought baout it for a minute in the candle light. His two year old imagination had the Perfect answer. "Drac-Ons!" he whispered, which is two year old for "Dragons!"
"Dragons?!" I asked surprised that he would put the two concepts together.
"Drac-ons!" He affirmed.
"Yes, Dragons. They come out to play when it storms. Let's watch them!" I continued and so began our own family fable of what makes thunder and lightning when it storms. There is nothing to be afraid of It's just our freinds the dragons coming out to play.
So now when there are clouds in the sky, or we we see lightning, or hear thunder My Boy Points out the Dragon to me and we Declare " There Be Dragons!"

The first two pictures were taken by candle light the night we discoverd the Dragons playing in our skys.
The last one is a sketch from an old sketch book of mine that seemed a fitting illustration.