Let There Be Rain

Rain continues to fall steadily. At times the storms become fierce enough that Music forgets his inability to climb the stairs...forgets the arthritis that had caused him to sleep downstairs in recent years. From my bed I can hear the tap tap of his nails on the hardwood floors as he makes his way to my side. Why do the thunderstorms almost always happen at night?

The driveway in the photograph leads through the woods to my house. For the last two days the rain has not had time to soak into the earth. It gathers at the lowest part into two long puddles. These are the kind of puddles I loved to play in as a child: simply sloshing barefoot through them with my siblings and cousins, or sailing magnolia leaf boats on the  gleaming surface of an imagined lake. 

The family compound is a serious place to be these days. Not because of the stormy weather, though continuous and lasting rain does put emphasis on the emotional climate. My cousin, Micheal, has succumbed to a lengthy illness. He was a mainstay in the family business of Shearwater Pottery, in charge of the annex and mold-making for years. After Katrina, the hurricane that destroyed most of the buildings on the property, he became less active in the pottery and very slowly declined. The eldest of our generation, he is the first to depart. And we who are left behind cannot but be aware of our own mortality. His ending is a beginning of sorts. A milestone perhaps...

Rain can be refreshment...
Rain can be tears...
Rain can be a curtain
that shields us from our fears.