April Storms in St.Louis

A bad storm came through the St.Louis area last Sunday evening. I am given to understand that the most damage, done by the wind and hail, happened in the Maryland Heights, Creve Coeur and Bridgeton areas. Our motor home is all right, but our little car was sitting in Bridgeton and suffered about $4,000.00 worth of hail damage. As I was walking around our rv park the other evening, a feeling of d'e ja'v ue hit me. Trucks parked around us have labels on them like "Roofing Team" and "Disaster Response Team". Insurance companies are now out in full force, just as they were last year around this time when a tornado devastated parts of the St.Louis area. Most fortunately the damage this year has not been as bad.
The past month has been fairly busy for us, it has not been a boring stay for us in St.Louis at all. I have been able to reconnect with an book club I once belonged to and have been able to attend one of their meetings- also joined another book club and have met once with them. Since we have been on the road I have missed doing volunteer activities. I have discovered Connection to Success is only a few blocks from our home, and it is one place where there are many opportunities to volunteer my time. It is an organization devoted to helping low-income women move into the workplace, teaching them job skills and how to dress to maximize their opportunities for employment. Monday I spent a couple of days there bagging cookies for a trade fair.
Yesterday I spent sitting with a friend in a hospital room waiting for her mom to come out of surgery. It was a deeply emotional, soul wrenching day as her mom's diagnosis is not looking all that good. However, I was glad that I had the opportunity to be there for them.
It did please me then, after being inside a hospital all day, to be awakened by a bird signing at midnight. One nice benefit to our way of life is that when our windows are open we have very close access to God's wonderful world.  The bird's song changed rapidly from "what cheer" to "whose here" to "give it here", its' here" "hurry up-hurry up" "in a minute","come here,come here" "whats up whats up" -  all interspersed with tweets, chips and many other vocalizations, even mews (maybe there was a catbird or just a cat adding their part to the evening concert). I started counting the many different sounds in hopes that in doing so I could be lulled back to sleep. That did not work, so I got up to write down everything I was hearing, and that filled a page very quickly. I decided that it had to be only one or two mockingbirds singing their hearts out with the entire repertoire of songs which they had in their little heads. No I am not making this up, nor was I in a dream state- I was very much awake. The whole experience recalled to my mind what the poet Browning once wrote: "The larks on the wing; the snail is on the thorn; Gods in His heaven- all's right with the world!".