The Lightning That Still Flashes

Every morning, I sort my pills—blood pressure, calcium, that generic vitamin C my daughter swears by. I remember my mother doing the same, her arthritis-knotted hands arranging little orange tablets in her plastic weekly container. Some rituals just pass down like heirlooms.

Then comes the iPhone part. My grandchildren insisted—'Grandma, you need to see the baby photos!' So there I am, eighty-two years old, tapping at this glass rectangle like it's some delicate bird that might fly away. I fumble, I squint, I press the wrong thing. But then—a video of my great-grandson's first steps across a sunlit kitchen floor. Suddenly, I'm weeping into my coffee.

The screen glows like lightning, like that summer afternoon in 1953 when the sky turned bruised-purple over Lake Michigan. My father had been teaching me to swim all summer—his strong hands supporting my belly as I kicked, his voice patient as tide. 'You're braver than you think, Peanut,' he'd say, using the nickname I hated but secretly loved.

That day, the storm caught us halfway across the bay. I was twelve, terrified, certain I'd sink. But Dad's calm voice carried through the thunder: 'Stroke with your arms, breathe with your heart.' Lightning cracked the sky open—white, electric, terrifying. I'd never felt more alive.

We made it to shore just as the heavens broke open, drenching us in rain that smelled of ozone and possibility. We sat in the car, shivering, wrapped in his wool coat, eating lukewarm sandwiches from the cooler. 'That's the thing about fear,' he said, watching the rain blur the windshield. 'Once you swim through it, you realize it was just water all along.'

I look at my phone now, glowing with messages from children and grandchildren scattered across three states. My mother's vitamin bottle sits beside it. In some ways, nothing has changed—we're still just swimming through storms, guided by hands that taught us to trust our own strength.

The lightning still flashes, in different forms. The love still carries us. And somehow, we always make it to shore.