I grew up in Chicago where rain was a given. Where snow was a given, come to think of it, and sleet…hail…whatever. There was never a doubt that soon enough the sky would open up and deliver.
But while that rain was a givin’, dear reader, it was also a takin’ - as in taking away the ball game for that day, or washing out the hike or the picnic or the beach day or the biking, etc. etc. I would say my relationship with rain as a young kid was contentious. Too many times it seemed to arrive on days where I had plans. And not just any plans, mind you: usually super exciting, ‘I’ve been waiting so long for this day’ type of plans. I began to associate rain with disappointment. I often wore the cold, wet chill of precipitation not just on my shoulders, but in my heart. While meteorologists tracked barometric pressures and storm fronts with dials and gauges, I measured rain in bars of emotional distress.
Somewhere along the way, though, things shifted. I recall seeing the deep green leaves of a maple in May one day, as if for the first time, just outside a school window. April showers bring May flowers! Wow! Something connected, and while rain still came with annoying regularity, it just as often began to feel welcome - like on a smoldering summer day, or with an autumn vengeance that would whip Lake Michigan into a frenzied, rollicking wonder.
Slowly my appreciation for rain took seed. Through college, now in Maine, rain often arrived with amazing skies and bewildering light. The weather systems there, be them nor’easters or slow migrations from systems west, seemed to deliver rain almost as an afterthought. Blustery winds, downed limbs, and again the froth of a nearby ocean were the show. The rain followed along like a dutiful friend. My last year there, living aside the Atlantic, rain began to feel like a warm blanket. Its patter on the roof above, me studying late at night below, would light a fire in my heart and into the late hours the pages would turn.
Into grad school now, and the showers from above came with lessons. Studying its impact, the way our urban fabric reconciled bouts with storms, I took note of the myriad gutters and pipes, the downspouts and swales, and it made rainy days an active event. Every storm was an opportunity: here comes another drainage lesson! And I would get out in the rain, and follow it like a detective, pursue it like a suitor, and learn its moods, its menace, its romance, as it gushed through cobble streets or slowly dripped from twilight trees.
Soon after, Northern California beckoned. For several years in the City, rain seemed to arrive horizontally as a misty confusion, the mystery of Bay Area fog and its patterns slowly revealing themselves to me. Once again the air’s moisture asserted its irksome side, only this time without puddles. The emotional bars, long retired, awakened into despondency on cold grey days I’d previously known as summer. And in winter, the rains came with an anger that raised doubts regarding the name Pacific.
But I was smarter now, and my appreciation for rain had been etched - forever, it turns out. One year, an El Niño winter brought isolation and distress to many. I recall being stranded for a few days near the Petaluma river with our young family as water took refuge in the adjacent marsh and just stayed there. We were locked in, and the rains kept coming. It was relentless…and it was beautiful. I could see the life sustaining effects all around us. Even in a deluge, its value was apparent and in hindsight I believe that year crystallized an understanding of how things work here. I don’t recall ever regretting the arrival of a wet day since.
At present, years later, I’m well used to the dry summers. I’m in tune with months on end without wet skies delivering. North of the City’s fog, the heat can take over, and it feels like summer again. Plans aren’t interrupted, and now it’s the calendar’s pages that easily turn. And soon enough we all start to miss the rain like we miss an old friend. “I hope it remembers to come back,” we think. “It would be great to see each other again.”
So when a September rain is forecast, it feels exciting! It feels like Christmas is coming, and we wonder to what dimensions might our gift be described. When will it get here? We check our phones and make contingency plans, and we’re happy to have to make them. We clean up the garden, preparing for a little messiness, smiling all the while. And when the first drops come, it’s a wonder.
DJ