Weather Happens

My son has helped sand the timber frame for two days now with nary a complaint, so I let him off about 3 today to go paddle his kayak. At about 4 or so it got kinda darkish and I asked the packing-up-their-things-to-go workers if they thought he'd have the sense to come in - as if they'd know. I returned to my sanding after they left. Then all hell broke loose. Lightning crashed close from many directions and gusty twisty wind sent branches flying and raindrops the size of bumble bees pounded the bare ground of the construction site. I stood on the back deck and stared down the cliff at the dock as if I could wish him safely there. I figured the best place for me at that point was near my cell phone in case he had the good sense to be in someones house after having the good sense to pull the kayak up on their dock. I sat in the car alternately confident he would do just that and hysterical that he was swamped in the middle of the lake with a life jacket not belted on properly because they never think they will need them and with those giant pants they wear now with a dozen pockets and layers of extra fabric and that are way too long dragging him down into the lake. Confident in his competence; Hysterical that he was in danger. Pretty soon, he came running up the road wet as an otter and thinking it was all the funniest thing since the bad jokes in Boy's Life magazine. The kayak was indeed on someones dock but they weren't home and of course he had memorized neither the house number nor the street name, so we set off counter clockwise around the lake in the van. Of course, none of the landmarks were recognizable to him since he'd ran it in pouring rain and from the other direction, so we took a couple false runs down some cul de sacs and he took a false run down someones back yard before pronouncing it the wrong one, and we eventually found the right cul de sac and the right house. While he ran down for the boat and paddle, I knocked on the door of the now well-lit house - and who should answer but the woman who sold us the lot. She had been working on her house next door and had run to her neighbor's to wait out the rain. We roped the kayak on top of the car in the still pouring rain and drove it back to our lot and dumped it behind some construction materials in the front yard. He made me trip-odometer the route back - one mile! We drove back to Mineral Point cold and wet while he typed phrases into my navigational device and had Jennifer, as we call her, say them in English and British. Now we are back and all the wet stuff is in the washer and we are dry and it is quiet.