THUNDER CAKE
On sultry summer days at my grandma’s farm in Michigan, the air gets damp and
heavy. Storm clouds drift low over the fields. Birds fly close to the ground. The
clouds glow for an instant with a sharp, crackling light, and then a roaring,
low, tumbling sound of thunder makes the windows shudder in their panes. The
sound used to scare me when I was little. I loved to go to Grandma’s house
(Babushka, as I used to call my grandma, had come from Russia years before), but
I feared Michigan’s summer storms. I feared the sound of thunder more than
anything. I always hid under the bed when the storm moved near the farmhouse.
This is the story of how my grandma- my Babushka- helped me overcome my fear of
thunderstorms.