PAD Challenge Day 15: God Moving the Furniture

First, I want to mention that my poem, "Public Apology", is featured today on the website Your Daily Poem. Thanks for Jayne Jaudon Ferrer for selecting it. (If you don't visit the site today, you can find my poem archived for April 15th.)

Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a poem with the title "________ Story", and (2) "...think about a small habit you picked up from one of your parents, and then to write a piece that explores an early memory of your parent engaged in that habit, before shifting into writing about yourself engaging in the same habit."  So here we go:

Storm Story
 
When I was little, my mother would tell me
that the thunder in the sky was God
moving the furniture, or the angels bowling.
She hoped this would assuage my fear,
but I couldn't ignore her body language,
especially during an evening storm,
when she'd pace the halls and rooms of our house
in her nightgown like a restless ghost,
smoke trailing behind her from another cigarette.
 
When I was a little older I wanted to be
a meteorologist. The hows and whys of weather
fascinated me, and I documented their changes
with my amateur weather station. I could estimate
the distance of a lightning bolt by the number
of seconds between its flash and boom.
Still, I inherited my mother's fear of thunderstorms.
 
If I were a dog, I'd hide under the bed whimpering
whenever thunder crashes overhead.
I can't sleep through storms at night.

And like a dog, I have a kind of sixth sense -

at the slightest distant rumble or faint flash,
I'm awake, turning on the lights and pacing
through the house, just like my mother.
But I've never smoked.