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Learning to Love the Rain: It Ain’t Easy

Photo by Ashley Rose, Creative Commons

Photo by Ash­ley Rose, Cre­ative Commons

Today the rain started. It could have been worse. They pre­dicted hail for Vic­to­ria. I woke up this morn­ing in an amaz­ing mood to a sunny fall day: head clear, full of energy, ready for any­thing. By 3 p.m., my mood greyed with the sky and by 4 p.m. I was down­right despon­dent when the rain came.

Since mov­ing to the West Coast of British Colum­bia 22 years ago, I’ve con­sid­ered myself a weather vic­tim. A few years ago I had to admit it — I suf­fered from SAD (Sea­sonal Effec­tive Dis­or­der). If I could move to the desert I would, but love has a way of mak­ing us do crazy things. For love, I live in a rain forest.

This win­ter I am deter­mined to improve my out­look — I will not be a weather vic­tim. Besides, com­plain­ing about the weather is bor­ing. I vow to use my sun lamp. I invest in a beau­ti­ful umbrella. I look for poems about rain to help me dis­cover the beauty in it.

Here’s one from J. Patrick Lewis: “I pud­dle up the neighbourhood/​I make the mail­man mad/​I wake the worm and spank the frog/​Sleep­ing on his lily pad.” Hmmm, spank­ing frogs? Sounds a bit obscene. Cute, but it doesn’t really help me.

Here’s another: “It’s rain­ing, it’s pouring/​the old man is snoring./ Went to bed and bumped his head/​and didn’t get up in the morn­ing.” See what I mean? It’s not easy to feel good about the rain. Besides, this poem scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. I was sure old men died when it rained.

I try again. Anne Sex­ton writes: “The rain drums down like red ants/​
each bounc­ing off my window/​The ants are in great pain/​and they cry out as they hit…”

Ok, this poetry thing is not working.

I turn to sci­ence. Some­how it helps me to know that rain falls at the speed of 22 miles an hour. Now that’s admirable. And when I con­sider the fact that many women and chil­dren in Africa spend four to five hours a day just search­ing for water, it hum­bles me.

Tonight, the win­dows are wet with rain, and I hear it on my roof. It doesn’t sounds like dying red ants (with all respect to Anne Sex­ton). In fact, I can’t think of a metaphor or sim­ile for it. It just is what it is and I’ll have to make my peace with it.

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 28th, 2009 at 10:34 pm and is filed under Mind, Poetry, Spirit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Learning to Love the Rain: It Ain’t Easy”

  1. Sue Says:
    September 30th, 2009 at 8:52 am

    As a Rain­coast res­i­dent for all my life (except those two mis­guided years in Cal­gary brrrr) I sym­pa­thize with peo­ple who suf­fer from SAD. I find a late-​February sun vaca­tion does won­ders — not that I usu­ally do one, but other peo­ple seem to think it works.

    My best way of deal­ing with the rain is to thank it for mak­ing every­thing green and clean. Vic­to­ria (even in the rain) smells AMAZING. And rain pro­vides per­fect excuses for kicky, fun galoshes, great umbrel­las, and LOTS of boozy night­caps! I put on 10 pounds in the win­ter from all the deli­cious win­ter foods that are too hot to cook in sum­mer (roast beast, york­shire pud­dings). And on those days in Jan­u­ary when you awake to a rogue morn­ing of sun­shine, with the mois­ture still glis­ten­ing on blades of grass: pure heaven.

  2. kerry Says:
    September 30th, 2009 at 11:01 pm

    Thanks for the com­ment, Sue. Yup, much as I like Cal­gary, the snow does put it in perspective.

  3. Gil Namur Says:
    October 1st, 2009 at 9:14 am

    Hi Kerry,

    Great piece :- )

    I made peace with the rain long ago. I find it some­how sooth­ing to my rest­less spirit.

    While this is not a poem, I think you will appre­ci­ate it! It is an amaz­ing live per­for­mance of rain and thunder.

    Have a peek! It’s about 1 1/​2 mins.

    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​M​6​Z​V​p​Z​q​i​s​t​k​&​a​m​p​;​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​=​r​e​l​a​ted

    Cheers,

    Gil
    P.S. I once wrote a poem (lyric) called “The Faith­ful Pray For Rain” .. but its not really descrip­tive of rain. How­ever, here it is .. and LOL .. I just noticed, it has NO punctuations!!

    The Faith­ful Pray For Rain
    1992, Gil Namur

    There seems to be a prob­lem
    No one can address
    It seems to me for­got­ten
    How often we oppress
    And how we take for granted
    A hand full of grain
    While some­where in the desert
    The faith­ful pray for rain

    There seems to be con­fu­sion
    No one can resolve
    And in our grand delu­sion
    How often we absolve
    Our lack of under­stand­ing
    For all of their pain
    While some­where in the desert
    The faith­ful pray for rain

    There seems to be begin­ning
    There seems to be an end
    And in that day of wis­dom
    Oh how will we defend
    Our lack of under­stand­ing
    Our show of dis­dain
    While some­where in the desert
    Begins to fall the rain

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