004Rain
I think about the rain a lot.
- - - - -
One of my earliest clear memories is from some time in... probably 2004, sitting at the top of the driveway with my parents and my baby sibling and watching the first thunderstorm we'd had in months. The drought hadn't gotten as bad yet as it would a few years later, but a thunderstorm like this was still a rare experience for my little self.
I loved it.
Our house was built on a weird little hill, so in my memories the driveway is a harsh 45 degree slope - though I was very small, so I doubt it was actually quite as severe as that. I remember though how this gave us a gorgeous view of the horizon, being the one slightly more elevated house in an otherwise flat stretch of suburban sprawl. It felt like the whole world was made of sky, a rolling stretch of ten thousand different mottled greys, split every few seconds by a flash of lightning.
I loved the baritone rumble of thunder in my chest. I loved the roaring beat of the rain on concrete and tin and asphalt and dry cracked clay, almost louder than the thunder.
I've talked to so many people who are afraid of storms, or just dislike them, but I've never understood it. Of course I respect the fear, and I can logically comprehend the dislike. Loud noises suck sometimes, power outages are annoying, and sometimes it is miserable to be cold and wet, when you didn't wanna be.
But there's nowhere I've ever felt safer than when I'm standing exposed, drenched, shivering with joy and cold and the pressure of a million tons of water impacting over my shoulders.
I remember the water running down the concrete slope of our driveway in what seemed like an inch-thick sheet. I pictured the roads flooded with so much water that we would need to trade in our little car for a boat - the sort of naive and genuine childish fantasy that I still miss believing in.
I have the vaguest sense of my mother standing just behind me, supervising as I splashed my hands in the runwater and marvelled at the sky. I can almost hear her laughing as she holds my newborn sibling, having brought us both outside to experience the storm.
With a memory like that as one of my earliest... I don't think it's any surprise that I adore the rain.
- - - - -
I have another memory much later, when I was probably in about 10th grade.
By now the droughts had started to improve a little, so getting a few big storms throughout the year, a couple instances of week-long rainy periods, wasn't so uncommon anymore. I didn't think they were any less wonderful for that, though.
We had one of those rainy periods one week, and every lunchbreak I so desperately wanted to run out and exist in it, submerge myself in that leftover childish joy of splashing in puddles, to go and lay face-up on the wet grass of the school oval, just to experience as much of the rain as possible.
This wasn't allowed, of course. It was very much against school rules to deliberately expose yourself to the rain for any length. In hindsight I suppose it was a reasonable policy - there's a bunch of reasons why spending the second half of a school day soaked to the bone is probably a bad idea. On top of that, I was fully aware that the majority of my peers wouldn't understand it. I was just starting to realise at this point that I didn't quite fit in, and maybe it was best not to draw too much attention to myself.
But by the end of the week I was going crazy. The brief minutes on the way home and after school weren't good enough. I needed the rain.
So on the last day of the week, I decided I didn't care anymore. I ran out into the courtyard outside the library, and I spread my arms to the sky and I squeezed my eyes shut so my face could catch the rain, and I laughed and let myself splash in puddles and lay on wet grass and became four years old again, sitting with my hands in the water and marvelling at the beauty of it.
A few of my more daring friends even joined me briefly, in particular one redhead goofball who I still think about fondly sometimes. Most of them quit pretty quickly though, when the staff caught on and called us back, threating reprimands if this carried on. I don't blame my friends for that choice. It was the sensible one.
But they couldn't catch me. I didn't care for consequences or reprimands. I barely heard them calling. And none of the adults would dare brave the pouring rain to confront me directly. I was untouchable out there. So after a while they gave up, and left me to dance and splash and play.
In the end, there wasn't even really any consequences. Nobody could be bothered waiting around for the entire lunchbreak just to send the weird kid to time-out afterwards. In fact I'm pretty sure I missed the bell, and was more than 20 minutes late to class. That got me a little bit of an angry lecture, and pointed questions about why I was soaked.
I didn't care. I was grinning through the entire thing, which of course only pissed them off more.
If I was back there again, the only thing I would do differently would be to do it sooner.
- - - - -
Throughout all of my teenage years, all the way into adulthood, the love never faded. Every time I heard the rain start up, the familiar rolling hum against the roof, I would drop what I was doing and run outside to stand in it, at least for a few moments. I would whisper little prayers and thank-yous and greetings to whoever was listening, whether that was the sky or the raindrops or the wet earth. Sometimes I would laugh, or yell wordless joy into the clouds. Whatever felt honest to me at the time. Whatever felt real.
I love falling asleep to the sound of rain, the most perfect kind of white noise. I love being curled up and cozy inside, knowing I'm also cradled by a storm outside and above and around me. I love waking up in the morning and immediately knowing by the muted light from the edges of my window that the sky is still overcast and the air is still full of gentle mist, like waking up softly next to a lover or a best friend.
You'd think I would be the kind of person to fall asleep listening to recorded rain ambience, but I've never been able to. There's so many things that embody the rain besides just the sound, as much as that is an important part of it. But the quality and pressure of the air, the smell of wet dirt and grass and hot concrete, the tingling ozone sensation on my skin in the moments just after the first lighting strike... at best, a recording is an obvious fake, lacking the soul of the storm.
At worst, I wake up in the middle of the night and I hear the rain noise from my phone, and for a brief moment I open myself up to all the other sensations... only to be hit with crushing disappointment when I realise it's not real.
I love the rain. I think that love might be one of the first things I was ever truly certain about. It's one of the only loves that persisted throughout all the twists and changes of my psyche and soul.
When I picture a perfect day, I picture the sky outside overcast and the background patter of rain on a tiled roof. When I think of home, I think of standing in that rain with someone I love, and smiling.
- - - - -
There was going to be a particular ending to this post, when I started writing it.
It was going to be melancholy and longing, a pang of grief for something lost.
I'm not sure if this is going to be the ending I intended. Let's find out.
- - - - -
These days, standing in the rain doesn't feel quite the same. I don't always run outside anymore when I feel the first droplets. I still always say hello, and thank you, whispering it under my breath or in the silence of my heart. But sometimes it feels... empty. Like nobody is listening anymore.
I think some people would call this 'growing up'. I think you could call it a lot of other things - depression, apathy, disconnect... or just moving forwards.
Sometimes you fall out of love. Sometimes you change as a person. Some people would say this is natural, normal, expected.
But I miss being four years old. I miss not caring for the consequences. I miss when the rain could soothe all wounds, expel any fear, swell my heart with love and joy and the deepest kind of contentment.
I remember the way I felt watching the rain at night as a kid, the half-glimpsed sheets of water pummelling the roof of the shed in our backyard, fascinated by the ebb and flow of the storm.
I remember the way I felt on the day I had to go back home, standing on someone else's front porch and watching the rain fall somewhere I'd never seen it before, standing next to the person I had crossed half the world to meet. I remember her smile, bittersweet and real.
I remember the way I felt standing outside in the summer, surprised and amazed by the scattering of heavy, thick raindrops falling on the red bricks in the 40° air. I remember messing around with the hose as the rain drifted away, the spray of water only a simulcra of the real thing, but one born out of genuine love and joy, for eachother and for the tiny miracle we'd witnessed.
I miss how I felt in those moments. I miss being in love.
But I think that's why I'm writing this now. I think this is why I made a game about the rain with a friend, and I think this is why so many of my poems and stories are about it.
I think this is why I love the word 'inclement', and why I still don't and never will own an umbrella or a rain jacket.
You can fall out of love, and still be changed by it. A feeling doesn't stop being beautiful just because it has passed. It still has meaning, if you let it.
And I've realised something, while writing this.
It may seem to contradict everything I've just written, but... no, I think they can coexist.
...
Reading it back?
I don't think this post could have been written by someone who wasn't still in love with the rain after all.
🌦️ 🌦️ 🌦️