Rain

I’m sitting at my computer table and watching it rain. Nothing’s wrong, in fact things are going pretty well right now. I just like rain. For the several years that Wendy and I actively farmed, and helped feed over 50 families, we very often didn’t get nearly enough rain. In fact, a couple of years it was so stingy that we watched things turn brown and die, while we resorted to buying from other farms to make our weekly deliveries. I was constantly reminded that we as human beings can be pretty arrogant for the most part, considering that we owe our continued existence to 6 inches of topsoil, and the fact that it rains. Given that that is true, we teetered on the brink of extinction three summers in a row. But when rain finally comes, you can smell it long before it gets to you. It’s hard to define the smell, but it’s unmistakable. Then you hear it as it comes over the hill, just a steady, faint roar that gets louder slowly. I grab my stuff and start for the house, and when I get part way I can see it advancing down the hillside, obscuring the top, then halfway down, then rolling across the pasture. The roar is louder now, and once I would make a run for it. Not any more. I slow down and watch and listen, and smile so wide my cheeks hurt. The first drops are so big and hit so hard that for a minute I think there may be some hail mixed in, and I get a burst of adrenalin and panic, but that quickly fades as exhilaration takes over. There’s nothing there but big, fat raindrops. I can see dimples in the dust where drops hit, but only for a few seconds. Then everything is wet, the ground, me, and everything tha's green. I swear I can hear them singing. Why in thunder (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun) would anyone want to go inside where it’s still dry? So I walk and watch and smile, and get soaked to the skin, muddy from the knees down, and it’s all good. It reminds me of when I was small, and the house we lived in didn’t have running water. Summer rains were free showers, and my mom didn’t have to heat water on the stove and fill up the washtub. She’d give me a bar of soap and send me outside into the rain to get clean. You know, it feels as good now as it did then. Maybe I should carry a bar of soap around in my pocket.