Rain

It's finally raining here in Cincinnati! We've had a few sprinkles here and there over the past week or so, but nothing exciting (except for the storm we got yesterday, but I was in church and couldn't fully appreciate it). As I sit here typing and frequently stopping to admire the rain, I remember why I love it so.

It brings a wholesome, fresh smell from the ground. It was this smell that I noticed first, before even the sound and sight of the rain. The smell wafted through my open window and filled me with a peaceful sort of happiness.

Once I smelled the rain smell, I immediately recognized that the sound I had mistaken for the wind continuing to buffet the trees was in fact the rain pattering on the grass and houses and everything else. The wind still blew strong, but the sound of the raindrops mixed into the music.

A split second later I looked out the window and saw the rain as well. It fell slant-wise from the force of the wind and blurred the stand of Austrian pines across the field in a lovely way. Even now that the rain has lightened and the wind calmed, the swift fall of the rain to the ground is soothing.

During the height of the cloudburst, I could even feel the rain. The wild wind occasionally pushed stray raindrops through my window where the screen scattered them into a spray that refreshed my arms and face.

Unfortunately I couldn't taste the rain (I did try, but not hard enough), but the plants can. Well, I suppose they can't literally taste it, but they can drink in its life-giving goodness. As the playwright* said, "Water is life."

I know that if the rain continued for days on end, my peaceful, cozy contentedness would turn to sadness, but when I've waited so long for rain, the only sadness is the happy sorrow (if that makes sense) that the rainsong brings to me.

*The playwright I speak of is the screenwriter for "Dune." I don't know if playwright was the right word to use there, but poet didn't quite fit, and I didn't know what other word to use.