Rain

Saddest/Funniest. Thing. In. The. World. A middle-aged Asian male all by himself, drinking beer after beer, rocking out to Sugarland. In London. We sneakily and (somewhat) guiltily took pictures.

On a more serious note, it was such a beautiful day today. I love fresh, clear days. So much. I kind of miss the good old BC rain, actually. It hasn't really rained much since I've been here. Shocking, I know.

Rain. It's a funny thing really. So much of my life I have lived gloriously drenched in water - swimming pools, rain, the ocean, the lake. And if you are a girl...bathtubs. Oh for a bath. This tiny cubicle that I call my shower here does not hold a candle to a great big jacuzzi. But anyways, back to rain. I love it. It's a song, but more than that it's a story – this mysterious cycle of Heaven to earth to Heaven again. We sit beneath it, only partially covered by a canopy of trees; we dance in it; we sip our soup and burn our tongues and walk home in clothes that stick to our skin.

Rain is ours when a balmy summer’s night finds us soaked to the skin, watching as it playfully dances across the still surface of the lake. It is ours when, in anger, we drive too fast and silently stare down those fascinating droplets of water snaking their way across the cold window. It becomes ours when, as it washes down over our already wet cheeks, we cry with the skies. It is our song when words do not suffice; our laughter mingled with thunder and lightning in chaotic cadence.

At times, it leaves us shuddering in our desperation for warmth, any warmth. But other days, we skip through the streets together, holding hands and laughing, jumping into puddles, splashing one another in the path of oncoming cars under the broken streetlight. Rain – unbearably dreary at times, delightfully refreshing at others.

Constantly we change - slowly morphing into these people we are today, ever caught in the act of alteration. We look back through the lens of the past and barely recognize ourselves sitting on the beach, swimming in the rain. Sometimes, for a lingering instant, we find ourselves vaguely missing them. But here we remain, having learned to leave the water where it fell, waiting to see who we will become.

Taller and taller, deeper and deeper - we slowly grow. Gradually, we see who we are instead. And we like them. The countless string of sunny days and rainy nights have, all at once, broken us into a hundred pieces, tenderly recreated us, gently sanded down the edges and finally released us to the world on our still-shaky legs of adulthood. We collectively hold our breath, then slowly exhale in the realization that, despite our doubts and fears, we remain standing.

The rain sings out against the windowpanes and I trace its path with the tip of my finger, smiling reminiscently. Rain. This is my story. I swim in this puddle of earth, en route to Heaven once again.