Girl in the Rain
by Anna Luther
July 3, 2007 — Published in Accounts & Glimpses
The fluorescent lights cast an ill pallor over everyone on the train, and the cobalt blue seat cushions looked dirtier than usual. Dismayed by the gloom surrounding me and my fellow travelers, I looked up from the proposals on my lap and glanced out the window. The purple-grey sky veiled the sun, and torrents of rain kicked at the roof and windows. I was going to get wet. In spite of the impending drenching, I smiled.
A many-splendored thing
Rain is a purifying thing. Standing or jumping or running in a rainstorm and the drying off that follows always makes me feel like a new person. This is nature’s baptism, washing the dirt from a sheltered existence. I am cleansed from the filth of an indoors existence, cut off from the rest of creation. Spending my days inside a perfectly climate-controlled office, I easily forget that the wider natural world is working while I am tapping away at a keyboard. I am restored to fuller humanity as the waters wash from me the isolation of life in an office cubicle.
But for all its cleansing, there’s something delightfully illicit about running around in the rain. Mothers like to warn against the pitfalls of playing in the rain. “You’ll slip and fall,” they caution. “You’ll get sick. You’ll track mud in the house.” I can hear mine now, echoing from childhood, reminding me that no, I may not play in the puddles on the way to the bus and yes, I have to keep the hood of my rain coat up at the bus stop. Even now, I feel a little bit of delicious guilt when I so much as walk out in the rain without a coat.
A gift to the senses
Different seasons’ rains have different smells. Summer rains are warm, inviting. They carry the scent of budding fields, of growing things. They smell of flowers in bloom. They pelt you with insistence and thick droplets, but beckon you to luxuriate in their drenching perfume. Fall storms are musky and invite you to seek refuge near a window with a warm drink and a good book. Winter rains are cold and bitter, smelling of soaked tree bark and dead ground cover. Cool spring showers bring the promise of light and rebirth, borrowing the aroma of just greening grass.
Then, too, they are often accompanied by thunder and lightning delighting me though terrifying my dog. While I curl up by a window with the shades thrown wide up so I can watch the lights strike across the sky, my furry companion will haul all sixty-five pounds of her Shepherd frame to the closest available lap in hopes of finding consolation. She skittishly finds her way to me at last and, whining, buries her head in my lap. Together we ride out the storm. I try to console her fearful body as well as I can, stroking her head in hopes of calming her. It usually is to no avail — I enjoy the sights the storm offers, but she fears its sounds.
A particular pleasure
The storms that knock out power, though, bring a particular pleasure. The silencing of all electrical noises brings people together out of necessity. At a friend’s graduation party, a storm struck and “ruined” what had been the entertainment — the tiresome and noisesome television. One guest, late in arriving but aware of the outage, brought a small box of tiny white tea lights with her. Arranged on various bowls and plates to serve as holders, the candles’ gentle glow gave the living room a very cozy, close feeling. Roommates hiding in their bedrooms ventured out to join those already in the living room, quickly becoming far more lively than been before the outage. Friendly debates erupted; musicians brought out instruments to share. The whole room was singing, laughing, arguing, teasing. And still the lightning flashed and the thunder sounded around the apartment. We paid no notice to it, though that storm was the very thing that had made the party.
I never knew…
“You want to go walking in the rain?” My friend grinned capriciously at me. He knew he was issuing a challenge.
“Okay.” I tried to be as nonchalant about it as possible, but I failed. His grin shifted to disbelief mixed with amusement.
“What? Are you sure?”
“I’m not going to let you have all the fun!”
I would not be outdone. I would not let my friend go wandering without me in a storm, to return triumphantly drenched and contented with stories of how glorious the rain felt on his skin or how beautiful the lightning was between the trees. I would not pass up this opportunity to learn for myself what wet pavement beneath my feet felt like. This challenge was my invitation to something entirely new: a willful walk in the rain.
My friend’s brown eyes smiled at me through rapidly clumping lashes. He couldn’t believe that I had lived so long without running through a thunderstorm. Neither could I. We walked and ran alternately as the terrain and wildly whipped drops allowed, now proving too much for us to resist and forcing us to slow down, now lessening and prodding us to run freely. The touch of the water offered curious and unexpected sweetness . The water emphasized the pungency of the pines around us. I breathed deeply. Here was all the reason I’d ever need to be thankful for the sense of smell.
And so it ends
The train came to its final stop, and literally jolted me from my reverie. I at last had arrived at my puddle-stained station. I scrambled to gather the papers now carelessly strewn on the seat beside me as the rain continued its rhythmic slap, slap on the roof of the train car. And so I headed out into the rain again, the cold drops grazing my skin. I didn’t have a coat, or an umbrella, or a friend to laugh at my naiveté. Head down, I plunged ahead, my messy hair flapping against my forehead and sticking there. I felt my skirt wrapping itself around my legs, tangling me up in folds of fabric as my brown leather heels drank from the puddles around them.
Illustration by Anatole Upart.
Anna Luther
Anna Luther is an obsessive musician-writer whose days are split between pondering the finer points of Bach and flogging verbose writers.
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