Howdy,
RAIN!!!
We want it.
We need it.
In Turlock, we pray for it.
Campaign for it. Plastered on signs stuck in hard-soiled front lawns yards: “PRAY FOR RAIN!”
Prayer answered.
It’s beautiful.
Hearing it last night, through a cracked window as we slept. Background sound of blessings.
It’s beautiful.
This morning, as it kept doing its thing. Falling wet.
Sounds of morning traffic tires sloshing in streets letting me know it’s for real. More than a sprinkle. The downpour strobing in automobile headlights.
It’s beautiful, and I love it.
I love the rain.
Fresh. Clean. Wet. Active. Water.
If you don’t know it, you will: I love water and so much about it. Drinking it, swimming, jumping a river cliff, soaking in hot tub, sitting in a winter pool as ice bath, gritting out contrast bathing — back & forth in pool & hot tub when no one else not a Hawes (Jasper and Ti are cold water beasts! 🙂 ) has dipped a toe in months — kayaking, snorkel and facedown mask free-floating a river, playfully wave diving and bodysurfing, generally enjoying summer play cooled off. Summer or winter.
My writer’s ear hears, Duh! to “drinking it.” But some don’t; don’t like drinking water. Like coffee, Gatorade, soda, juice, milk, adding powdered flavoring to stomach it, but they don’t like drinking water for the liquids we need. I crave all those crushing calories also. Can’t not. But I can go for a glass of water. Ahh, so good. (Editor’s note: slipping on some right now.) Pure hydration.
I have to remember that when the Coke calls. Pepsi pings. Root beer rings. Gatorade glows. Even sometimes when milk moos.
Have you noticed that? How Gatorade glows. Toxic?
Ah, the washing rain. Notice how I first wrote that we want it?
We do. Until it’s here when we need to be there. Work, school, wherever. Cancelled Jasper’s field trip to the pumpkin patch today; a bummer.
With the morning I again got to work through my slight frustration from the evening before at the truck double-parked in the spaces closer to our home. Thinking, See, now we have to go all this extra distance in the wet, as I sprinted by further out into the rain, pointing out a deep puddle Jasper would need to navigate to avoid wet feet all day. His shoes wouldn’t have been soaked at school if you weren’t parked in my space, man.
A neighbor also hustled out to taxi to school, and I said, “We hope for the rain and hate it when it’s here.”
I only said hate because I stood stalled strapping Jasper into his carseat, taking a pounding and stuck. I don’t mind running in the rain, but — impatience I need to work on, I guess — I don’t like to be stuck, getting soaked.
I see walking in the rain more as drops to dodge in an Ali dance hyped to Matrix.
In my mind.
I stood out and got soaked.
But I can’t be mad at this rain. It is sloshy out there right now: and it’s great. Amen.
Image credit: from iPhone’s images and videos
Just got a text from my wife, Sarah: “Love this weather!”
To her, I say, “Me, too; it’s beautiful, like you.”
—Billy
Reading. Writing. Living.
P.S. Someone just walked into the dry coffee shop and said — and I quote — “It’s raining out there.”
My thought: Well, duh. What a stupid thing to say. What an idiot.
Then I realized, I’ve just written a post saying, It’s raining out there.
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