White Dress: Delia's.
Floral Crown: Handmade.
The sky was beginning to darken when I arrived at the park. It was the park I used to play at when I was a child, right down the street from my house. Parent's were pushing their little ones of swings, a couple was playing tennis, and a father was playing basket ball with his two young sons as the mother sat in the car and watched. She gave me an odd stare when I stepped out of the car.
I made my way over to the corn field on the very outskirts of the park. Across the monkey bars, past the swings, walking on the bridge. My shoes made echos. I could smell the rain in the air, that thick, humid, build up of nature that coincides with summer time heat. The wind tickled and played with the little wisps of hair hanging from my bun. I hoped it would hold off until after my pictures.
I stared at the massive corn field. Rows and rows stretching on endlessly. The sudden tickle of wind that I had once felt suddenly vanished. The air was still. Almost too still. I twisted and turned, hid and crouched in amongst the maize taking my pictures, feeling alive. Something I don't feel very often. All of a sudden, as if a light switch had been turned on the wind picked up furiously. It blew the floral crown off of my head, threatening to push me down into the cracked and dusty soil. The thunder rumbled off into the distance, making the most spectacular, all powering sound. I thought back to when I was a little girl, how I believed thunder to be the giants bowling in heaven. I wish I still thought that. I hurried along my pictures at a faster pace, trying to beat the impending rain. All of a sudden I felt a pair of eyes on me. I glanced over and there certainty was. A pair of soft, big, innocent, brown eyes.
A deer. We watched each other intently for a few moments, not wanting to disturb each other's peace. An unwritten and unsaid agreement. She flicked her ears at me, curiously staring at this silly human with flowers on her head and sweat running down in rivets on her skin. When I turned away and looked back again a few moments later, she was gone.
I finished my pictures in a panic and the storm continued to build. The beautiful and serene blue sky had turned into a dark and foreboding painted mural of purples, blues, and blacks. The wind blew the corn stalks so furiously that I feared that the whole crop might be ruined.
I started to run back to my car, afraid of a down pour on my camera any second. The park which was once full of laughter and life was now dead. The swings rocked back and forth with ghosts and the leaves blew around aimlessly. All of a sudden I stopped. I felt God was with me. The strangest, most surreal feeling I've ever felt. He told me to walk, to slow down, to feel nature. I asked him why he had such wrath, why he was bringing this storm upon us. He didn't anwser.
Almost to my car, I spotted a bright burst of pink. A stuffed animal. A little bee. Some child had left it behind in the rush to beat the storm. This little toy which probably meant so much. I felt so emotional then, remembering when I left my favorite stuffed animal at church one day and how devastated I was. I took the animal, placed it under the pavilion so as not to get wet, and gave it a halo to keep it safe.
With much love, Lauren.
