Gratitude Monday: The quality of rain

It’s easier to be grateful for what you’ve got, but today I’m remembering the beauty of rain, even though I’ve not seen it for months.

I love rain. Growing up in Southern California, you learn to appreciate it for its rarity and the relief it brings after weeks of dryness. (What I most recall is the cycle of the seven-year storm: we’d have very little rain for years, and then suddenly all the water in the world would drop on us, overwhelming the street drains. I recall driving down Foothill Boulevard in Monrovia during one of those storms; the tailpipe in my Toyota was underwater.)

I loved the weather on the East Coast—in Virginia, not only was there rain, there were thunderstorms! They scared the liver out of me at first; but I came to enjoy them.

(Although, okay—seems like Dominion Power pretty much lost the plot whenever there was a thunderstorm.)

And the varieties of rain: mist, sprinkles, showers, gully-washers. An entire vocabulary of rain. And it always cleared the air and left things clean.

(Except in the summer. Sometimes rain alleviates the choking feeling of humidity, but you know it’s only temporary. You’re stuck until September.)

I will confess that rain in London could sometimes be a bit much—grey, grimy streets; grey, grimy buildings; grey, grimy rain pissing down for days. And Seattle? Don’t even get me started.

But experiencing rain in all its infinite variety, listening to it against the windows, running through it, watching it bead on plants and puddle up on sidewalks and lawns—knowing there’s something different happening in the air out there, a change from relentless, unremitting bloody sunshine…

I’m so grateful that I’ve lived places where rain has been a part of my life. There are people in the Silicon Valley who’ve never lived anywhere else; what impoverished lives those must be.