Rain, Rain, Go Away

It’s raining in Houston.

When I was growing up, I loved the rain. I looked forward to the rainy days in anticipation of long coats, and puddle jumping. It was a change, a shift, in the everyday. Growing up in Southern California, rain doesn’t’ happen on the regular every year, if at all. So it’s kinda neat.

During High school, while wearing all black, raincoat flapping in the breeze, and Tool playing in the headphones, rain became an outward expression of my turbulent, darkened soul.

Or so I thought.

While still in High school, the “El Niño” happened. And it rained, always, for a very long time. Rain slowly stopped being the Emo justification I always wanted it to be, and became much more of a wet nuisance.

While in College, I came to enjoy the rain again. Southern rain, that is.

It comes in the spring. It’s warm, intense, and finite. Those were the days of the 5-minute thunderstorm; complete with lighting, thunder, and rain drops the size of small puppies. Glasses of wine, coffee, sweat tea on porches and park benches.

And of course, a resurgence of puddle jumping.

Living in Santa Fe brought the monsoon storm, at roughly 6 p.m. every day. Standing on the back deck of the opera house, amongst colleagues and friends, a cup of organic black lighting coffee in hand. The desert sky gone wild with fragments and shards of red and amber streaking the white cotton wisps. Raindrops lit from a thousand angles by a thousand colors falling on red desert sand, with an orchestra tuning up in the background, barely audible over the torrent.

It’s raining in Houston.

Things to remember about rainy days in Houston:

1. It’s takes a REALLY long time for laundry to dry in this already humid climate.
2. Nobody listens to tropical storm warnings.
3. Everyone brings up the rain in conversation while going through their rainy day, as if to justify not listening to tropical storm warnings.
4. And, people flock to the 4th largest mall in America, to avoid the rain, and carry on conversations about it.

It’s raining in Houston