Living on Writer's Block

Another daily prompt post… This one asked what my favorite weather is.

Like most writers and poets and artists, I love a good rainstorm. Sitting inside on a stormy day, looking out the window at the beautiful gray world outside with raindrops fogging the glass, a mug of tea in my hands… it’s perfect. It’s a photo I want to get taken someday, if any of my siblings will comply to take it.

Rain is a beautiful thing. When you think about it, it’s quite special. Olympic-sized swimming pools float decondensed in the sky and don’t splash down in one giant soaking sheet (though it might seem that way sometimes). They fly above us, looking like soft, cottony balls of fluff until their bellies grow too large with rain and even then, they come down in drops and sprinkles and drizzle, not in one catastrophic falling blanket of water.

Billie Myers wrote a song called “Kiss the Rain.” There have been days when the drops of water were so fat that that wouldn’t have been much of a challenge. The song is, of course, about missing someone you love, and telling them to remember that you love them and the distance between you won’t be forever — asking them to wait for you and remember you. And it sounds like the type of rainy, grey day I adore.

Of course, there are different levels of rainy days that I have correspondingly different levels of affection for.

As a rule, the best days are the hot and stifling ones, that warn you all day that there’ll be a glorious storm later that night. And when the rain comes, it’s like the bellies of the clouds just split to release all their sweet, refreshing cold down on the weary people below. It’s a glorious feeling. Those are the days I love to sit out on the fence and watch it all come down, and watch the lightning; because the hottest and heaviest days usually end in a beautiful thunderstorm.

Some days are wet and drizzly all day, chilly, and with a bit of a bite to them that reddens your nose and makes your fingers ache. Those ones are great for the dark academia crowd; waking up late and walking to your favorite coffee shop for breakfast, your black umbrella held aloft and your precious bookbag tucked well against your body beneath your long trenchcoat. Those are the days when you set your teacup on the windowsill and watch the steam meld with the fog on the glass, and take a picture, because that’s a scene that’s hard to put into just one sentence. Pictures tell the story better.

Then there are the days where the sky is faintly overcast all morning, and then just when you’re walking home from the office the clouds begin to trickle their blessings down on you and you end up meeting the love of your life when he shelters you from the rain with his own umbrella. (Anne of Green Gables, anyone? Not that that’s happened to me, I prefer coffee shops and classrooms as settings for romance but it’s a nice sentiment.)

But I think my favorite cloudburst ever was last May. I had just arrived at a church potluck, and there were clouds right above the city but the whole horizon all around us was totally clear. We were sitting outside with our food, some of us, and of course, a Smash-Face ring had started among the teens. Suddenly we felt a spat — spat of water on our eyelashes and arms, and we looked up to see that the clouds were glittering. The sun was just beginning to come beneath the edges of the clouds, and its golden rays were shining almost perfectly horizontally through the falling rain. The light as it struck the drops was shimmering and reflecting off them, so that it looked as though the sky was dropping tiny diamonds down on us. Imagine standing in an empty parking lot, the smell of hot wet asphalt rising to your nose as you turn your face to the clouds. Above you, you see the grey smudgy clouds, looking like grey cotton candy in the sky, and then imagine that they begin to shimmer. Then a raindrop hits your eyelid so that you flinch, and wipe at it distractedly as you continue to look up at the clouds. If you are imagining tiny diamonds sparkling in the sky and falling rapidly down towards you, you cannot be more right. That is exactly what it looked like. It was beautiful, and I would love to have the chance to see that day again. I spent that afternoon running through ankle-deep puddles with my siblings and watching the church toddlers splash like they were in kiddie pools, and I came away soaked to the skin, my hair plastered unflatteringly down against my head, my already-oversized t-shirt sagging off my body, and a huge smile on my face. It was so much fun. The most fun I’ve had in the rain for years. I didn’t even care who saw me, I was having that much fun.

Rain has so many different moods of its own that it willingly shares with those it falls upon. Sunshine, snow, sleet, those all have their own set moods; rain is the only one that can be happy, sad, angry, calm, cheerful, depressed, all together. It lends itself beautifully to whatever your mood is — it’s sympathetic and caring, and speaks to you in its own way. Kiss the rain, as it kisses you.