Rainy Days Ramblings

I spend so much time hoping for rain that I get a little shocked when we actually get a couple of days of good soft rain. I know I can count on at least one good down pour during state fair time (I don't know why that is) and really look forward to it; it's usually still hot.
This year,though, the rain is providing me an added service: offering time to reflect. So often, we get the monsoons--moisture that builds most of the day, lurking on the horizon. We hustle about to finish up jobs or errands before the torrents force us inside for an hour. The monsoons actually add frenzy to my life. But today, as I sit in the tin box office, listening to the rain pop like corn on the roof, I have to bide my time. Not much will happen today--no customers, no sales, too sloppy to run the tractors in the yard.
Rains like this remind me of home. Long winter days and nights of moisture. I laugh to myself when I recall how we used to curse the moisture that would mould our towels, render newspapers unreadable, drip through the rafters, chills us through to the bone after weeks of trying to battle it. It would affect our soccer practices, our shopping routines, our dress code. Yet it would also bring the snails out for which my dad gave me .25$ per full milk jug. I would love the foam and sizzle produced from the 1/2 cup of salt we layered into the jugs to kill them; a sort of snail melba. Or my dad would get up on the flat roof and clean the oak leaves from the downspouts. If I wasn't careful below, I could get a good dollop of wet leaves across my shoulders as he'd throw them down. I learned to monitor his whereabouts by keeping track of his tobacco pipe or cigar smoke mixing with the wet air, swirling like a little chimney from roof-corner to roof-corner. Sometimes we would traipse the half-block to the park to watch the creek rise from a dribble to a stream to a torrent. There was a sense of danger standing on the bank that as a child I didn't quite understand but relished nonetheless. I guess I felt proud to be old enough to be trusted with peril.
When I lived in town not too long ago, the boys and I would rush outside to splash in the gutters or to watch elm leaves race each other down the block. I know that the neighbors were watching us and feeling that happiness people feel when watching youngster's pure joy.
Nowadays it seems that when it rains, I have to just stop. Just stand by the door and watch the rain fall into puddles. I try to think of words to describe the sound or feel of it. What else does that little plop resemble? If I were talented, then that little plop would resemble a deep breathe. And in that river of warm air as it exits my body would be my bills, my attitude, my sore muscles, my chores, errands, and obligations. My parents would be young again, and my wife happy. My spirit, anxious to be cleansed, would float on that deep breathe like a leaf in the gutter, and dance between each rain drop. Or it would raise it's weary head and catch just one on it's tongue.

For me this is time well spent.