Soggy Leaves

Now it feels like autumn. The trees are shaking off their leaves, and the drizzle makes them all soggy. It’s 73 out, the heater is on in my office and the dark skies outside make me feel even more wrapped in autumn.

The rainy days are almost the favorite part of my autumn. A loud October thunderstorm is my favorite. Maybe I’m a drama queen (I’m not anymore, but I miss drama) but there’s something about thunderstorms. They make for atmospheric scenes in books. I don’t know why I’ve not written a cathartic lovers’ argument in a thunderstorm. I need to remedy this.

November is in a week, and I am hearing rumors of snow in the forecast. Thanksgiving will be here before I know it. But I got my October rain.

June 1st

I feel a detachment from the outside world, which dresses itself in an indecisive grey-blue sky. I want it to thunder, with a torrent of rain. Life has gotten dusty.

I dress myself in an equivocal mood: I want to stand in the deluge; I want to rest inside.

Effervescent

I want to feel effervescent, like Max Richter’s recomposition of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons: Spring. Effervescent means bubbly, but not in the sense of a bubble bath with its larger, comforting bubbles. Effervescence is fine, tiny bubbles, fizzy bubbles, sharp on the tongue when drinking sparkling water. Where bigger bubbles sing like whales (if they could), effervescence tinkles like fairy bells and giggles.

Today is not an effervescent day. It has been gloomy all day, with a tendency toward light rain. I am not effervescent today, not even bubbly. I’m cold coffee looking for ice so I can chill. If Vivaldi composed this day, it would be the Fifth Season: Blah. The opposite of effervescent.

I don’t know how to make myself feel effervescent, or maybe I do. The right company can make me feel effervescent. A crush can definitely make me feel effervescent. Enough hilarity would make me feel effervescent. (As a nerd, I have some go-tos for this: Galaxy Quest, Middleman, Shinesman, Young Frankenstein). Hypomania makes me effervescent right until I’m clutching my hair and yelling “Make it stop!”, so I don’t want to go there. I definitely prefer the other methods.

Right now, in the middle of a rainy work day, I’m going to have to settle with not being effervescent. That cold coffee isn’t bad with a little cream and ice.

Lady of Storms

There’s a pink sky this morning painting the maple leaves across the street apricot. No sailors in landlocked Missouri to take warning and no storms in the forecast, bringing the lie to the old saw about red skies at morning.

I crave more rain. It’s a part of my being that I have forgotten for too long. Once, I may have walked through lightning unscathed; I do not know if I believe my perception anymore. I am an unreliable narrator unless I speak from science.

Before I spoke from science, I spoke from storms, feeling the sodden leaves dragging at my feet and a cold rain lashing my ears.I need, I, the storm shouted. I need more.

I have grown past that part of my life; I do not need so much and I know how to get what I need. I speak in measured sentences that psychology tells me are the right ways to communicate. But I miss the ferocity of the storms and the power I felt when I hid in them.

Rain

Rain today

We may get lots of rain today, particularly welcome after a 113 (F) heat index (45 in Celsius). We’re in a 1-3 inch range, and I would like to see a gullywasher where the rain is sheeting off the streets and you can hardly see through the drops.

A few of my favorite rains

I love rain in all its permutation, but here are some of my favorite rains:

Midwestern gullywashers, as stated above. Rain that roars on the rooftop, that causes instant puddles in the gutters. Gone almost as soon as it’s started. On a summer day, when encountering a gullywasher, one should give up trying to find shelter. One must just accept that one will be drenched to the skin. I remember walking barefoot and singing loudly in the storm, knowing that I had found freedom from being well-dressed and well-behaved.
The sunny afternoon rainbow sprinkle of rain. There are clouds bringing rain, yet the sun still takes up the sky, and the combination yields a rainbow if one comes round right.
October evening thunderstorms. I love walking out in October thunderstorms. It takes some good rain gear — I used to have a long wool cloak with a hood that negates most of the rain. October thunderstorms are moody and romantic, the Midwestern US version of a stroll across the moors.
Light rains in April which green up the grasses and invite the daffodils to awaken.

The western states need rain

The American West is in what is called a “super-drought”. It has not rained at all in a few places for a couple years. Wildfires burn in several states. I cry when I think of those places, and I hope they will be rained upon, making their reservoirs fill and their fires extinguish. If we could get a handle of this global warming (hint: corporations pick a reasonable level of profit and make their processes cleaner) we might have a chance.

So when I watch the rain today I will pray (which I seldom do) that the West sees an abundance of rain and that we as humans see an abundance of wisdom that will help us make the decisions that will stem global warming.

Thunderstorm

Where have all the thunderstorms gone?

Until today, they’ve curved around the south of us. Sometimes the north. Maryville has the distinction of being the highest point between Kansas City and Omaha. I wonder if this is part of the reason why we haven’t been getting the good storms.

Cue this morning

This morning I woke up to thunder. Close thunder. And rain pattering on the roof. Hours later, it still looks cloudy out and maybe rainy. And we are in a flash flood watch.

Maybe daylilies will come back from their wilting sulk. Maybe the grass will green up.

There’s another peal of thunder. It has been so long since we’ve had a good storm.

The Feeling of Living

Daylight Savings Time. And a storm. On a Sunday. I slept until 7 because the sun did not peek through my windows.

I almost stayed in bed all day. I just about asked my husband to bring me breakfast (pancakes and turkey sausage) in bed. But if I had, I would have missed Bowie Symphonic Blackstar through the speakers and the sight of the trees bending in the wind under sodden grey skies.

I have plans for today. I will work on the pre-beta reader edit on Kringle in the Night. I might binge watch Monsters Inside Me because of its medical drama and wonderful illness simulation. I can watch some Babylon 5 with my husband and gaze at the porch swing rocking wildly.

This is how I can tell I’m not depressed, because there’s something to come downstairs for. I seek out productivity. I try to make things happen in my life because that’s who I am.

It feels like Spring. It doesn’t, however, feel like Spring.

In my life, COVID banished Spring. Teaching classes from home, not going out to restaurants and the café, and missing the warm days on campus where people gathered by the pond on campus and lounged in the hammocks — none of that remained under COVID.

I didn’t go out when COVID first hit. My husband made all the trips to the grocery store because that’s his job in the particular division of labor we have. So I didn’t get to see the toilet paper shortages, the people defiantly not wearing masks, or much of the sunshine. My most vivid memory was looking out the window to see a sliver of blue above the houses. COVID, then, was a darkened corner where I sat waiting for the all-clear signal, which never came.

The restrictions have lightened up, but I still don’t trust Spring. The virus still threatens and we still stand apart from each other. The blue sky seems distant, outside the house, beyond the mask. Clusters of students once again drink and party outside their houses, but their feeling of safety is not shared by those of us who are older.

I may trust Spring again if a torrent of rain, what we called a gullywasher in my childhood, overtook my neighborhood. Sheets of rain cleansing, if not the virus, my tainted memories of Spring.

Deep October

So, October’s a bit warm right now. We sat on the patio at the local steakhouse for dinner last night and it was only a tiny bit cold in my shirt sleeves. Even when the cold front comes in Thursday, our highs are going to be in the seventies.

Even though the days are gloriously warm even as the leaves turn, I strangely look forward to the snap in the air, the frost, the chill rain under black skies. Especially the rain.

I had a cloak, a heavy and billowy thing of burgundy tweed with a lining of velour. There was nothing better than that for an autumn evening, especially if it was misting. The cloak had a bonnet hood with it to keep off the rain. I still have the cloak, but it desperately needs cleaning from hanging on a basement rack and there’s rips in the lining. And I feel a little self-conscious wearing it now, to be honest. It’s a quite spectacular cloak.

I look forward to the withered grasses, the brown, sere roadsides, the grey skies. I await the chill evenings, the dreary rainstorms, the crisp orange and brown mornings, the touch of frost. Summer has been with us too long.

Day 35 Lenten Meditation: Rain

I could use a good spring rain right now. A real gullywasher, where there’s no question of going out in it unless one wants to get drenched. And then I would go out into that rain and feel it drench me to my skin.

There is something purifying about standing in a torrential shower. From the skin to the soul, rain washes away all the dirt of the day. It chills my skin, reminding me that I am alive.