I remember as a kid sitting and playing outside my house one summer day, when I felt a small drop of rain on my shoulder. And then another on my head. I decided to sit there and let the whole rain storm come and go, feeling every drop of it. Eventually I went inside the house, completely soaked but happy. The memory of that very personal rainstorm has always stayed with me.
There are dozens of old, popular songs about rain out there. “Here Comes The Rain Again”, “Rainy Night In Georgia”, “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head”, “I Love A Rainy Night”. One of those titles is sure to give some of you boomers an earworm.
A lot of the time, rain songs are about sadness or loss. We often think of rain in a negative way, for example, when an event gets “rained out” or “it rained on my parade.” It never rains but it pours.
Over the years I’ve heard both locals and tourists complain about the rain here on the west coast. I like to refer to it as the “wet coast”. Well, we live in a rainforest, what do you expect?
My Dad always hated the rain, but then he had to drive a bus in it for 40 years. People laughed at him “So why the heck do you live on the west coast then?”
People who move out here from somewhere else in the country usually have to acclimatize to our weather, especially during the winter. It isn’t always about the rain itself, but the endless grey days we have to endure. It just makes the winter feel longer and darker.
Ah, yes. Rain. The good ol’ days. It almost seems sacrilegious to complain about it any more. The fires are raging, the harvests aren’t happening, the cows have no hay. If you surf the web, watch the news or read the paper, you know all the bad stuff going on because of our drought. These days the skies can just as easily be filled with smoke as with clouds.
The other day, I received an email from my cousin in Denmark, and in it she complained about the endless rain in her country this summer. There have been flash floods in Europe, in Venezuela and even in Tennessee. If there was only a way for them to send some of it here!
Looking out my window right now, there is cloud cover and the possibility of rain in the forecast this afternoon. If it begins, I will go outside and sit there and feel every drop. I’ll appreciate it like never before.
I have vowed to myself to never, ever complain about the rain again.