Due Diligence of Rain

It has important jobs to do ...

I love rain.  I love the sound the raindrops make on my umbrella when I’m out walking. It’s steady and calming and somehow it’s cleansing —it’s always been like that for me. Without any soap at all, it washed a sad day right into a happy one.

I remember when I was a child, we used to go camping during the summer.  Daddy found this big musty-smelling circus-sized tent for our family because there were so many of us.  He told us Mama refused to have us sleep on the ground so the tent had to be big enough to fit eight cots.  Daddy found them at the army navy surplus store in town.

I loved the sound of raindrops on our tent, especially at bedtime. It was exactly like the sound they made on my umbrella, but it was a much bigger sound, amplified by the size of the tent and how hard it was raining.  

“Now don’t touch the tent while it’s raining, children.” Mama would say.  “The rain will drip through the canvas wherever you touch it.”

Of course each of us had to test Mama’s theory, because it just didn’t make sense that rain would misbehave like that.  Rain was gentle and kind and it only pitter-pattered on our tent. It wasn’t there to drip inside and be a nuisance.  But each of us had to find out if Mama was right. 

Sure enough, the spot each of us tested dripped until the rain stopped. Then there was my little sister, Shari, who was only three that first year. She had about eight spots all dripping at once and fussing so badly that Daddy moved her cot to the middle of the tent, so she couldn’t touch any of the sides again.

Years later, I looked up this strange phenomenon in our encyclopedia: 

“If the tent is touched, the water droplets that gather will lose their surface tension. This causes them to seep through the tent fabric.” 

That was amazing, truly amazing to think rain had an ornery side.

I also used to love to sit on the porch swing on our big front porch, watching and listening to the rain for as long as it lasted. It was calming.  When the rain stopped in the summer and it was hot, it meant one thing: Fun. Rain always brought puddles for stomping in and mud for mud pies.

Now that I’m older, I still love the rain, maybe even more than I used to. I don’t have a big front porch, or a swing any more, but I do have a lanai that’s all screened and I love sitting there to watch and listen to the rain.

What I enjoy most is having my grandchildren with me when it’s raining. They already know what we’ll do when the rain stops.  We’ll stomp in the puddles first and when the puddles morph into mud, we’ll cook up something special with our wooden spoons and muffin tins.

In so many ways, through so many ages, rain purifies the soul. If you’re interested, YouTube has a channel called “Calm” and they have a lot of long playing videos with sounds of rain and water. Some are gentle rain, others are downpours. Still others are sounds of creek water flowing over rocks and stones, waterfalls, or ocean waves chasing each other up the beach.

Rain is Mother Nature’s finest … and it’s raining today.

Published Poet/Writer/Author of 5 books.
Quora Top Writer 2018
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