Grampa and I went for a walk right after the rain. He insisted. Now I know why. Memories are vivid from those few hours because the experience was new then, so long ago now.
I say we went for our walk when the rain stopped. How do you know if the rain has stopped when you’ve never seen rain? For a few minutes, water is falling from the sky and then it isn’t. Is that it?
That’s all we get?
People talked about rain all the time, and that someday we would all see and feel rain. The longer we were without rain, the more people talked about it as though talking would increase its likelihood. You don’t touch rain, they said. Rain touches you. Rain is cool. Rain is wet. If enough rain touches you, you will become cool and wet.
And so, until I was almost ten years old rain wasn’t rain. Rain was something people talked about, described, remembered, recounted in stories at dinner tables and sermons as though a sacred visitation. My generation and my mother’s generation hadn’t seen rain. The old people, Grampa and all his friends, had seen rain when they were my age. And all their talk, stories and allegories, songs, poems, plays, painting and sculpture-trifles no one had bothered with because they were too busy trying to survive-flourished after that glorious time of the rain. The art and literature I’ve studied, most of what has become symbols of our culture to the rest of the world, celebrates rain’s arrival, laments rain’s absence. These are works that share a darkening palette, as that time of rain becomes more of a memory, as those who were there to remember are now our memories.
