A Reverence For Rain

It rained here yesterday. It has been doing that quite a bit lately. Despite the intensity the volume rain here can sometimes achieve, the climate is considered semi-arid. Florida is almost like a desert at times, especially during extended summertime droughts. I guess that's a reason for The Sunshine State moniker. There have been entire months without a drop to quench the soil's parched palate.

Living here for so much of my life has been with strange acquiescence to the prevalent weather conditions. Missing the more regular rains of living up north, when it does rain I always take pleasure in the resurrected memories of my past.

Association of the rain with peace and rest comes from being a farm boy. When it rained I didn't have to work in the fields or do much of anything else. I'd sit with my dad and watch the rain. The crops were happy in their fields. My dad was happy his investment in the grain he'd sewn in the fields would be returned with a profit during the fall harvest. The world around me felt right.

Enjoying the rain is a part of the farm life within that has never departed me. Regardless of the intervening years, I revere rain in a way that probably seems strange to most of the city dwellers that are my neighbors.

When I settled down, I married a farm girl from the other side of the planet world. It rained for one of the days we went to her family home to visit her parents and siblings. They knew nothing about me, really. There was a huge language barrier between us. The Asian language I spoke was not the one they understood. Still, like me they regarded the rain with joy as we sat quietly under the protection of their roof. Content to sit with them, they felt as I did. There is much less distance between people who share love for the land and growing things.

We had a front porch on our Victorian style home in Connecticut where my wife and I spent many years raising our three kids. Whenever it rained and both of us were home, we'd sit on the porch swing together, savoring the cool air and the soothing sounds of the raindrops on the roof over our heads. Those moments have become many of the best memories I have of married life. There was peace in the world and ease in my life unlike anything I have known since. The rain was a bond to our childhoods that my wife and I shared.