Rain Is Pouring

 

Rainy Day Pause

“Whenever it poured like this, Max felt as if time was pausing. It was like a cease-fire during which you could stop whatever you were doing and just stand by a window for hours, watching the performance, an endless curtain of tears falling from heaven.”

Carlos Ruis Zafon (The Prince of Mist)

          This has been a summer of rain and more rain. I’ve given up carrying an umbrella, and just wear fast-drying clothes. My hair is short so that when it dries after being sopping wet, one can’t tell the difference from before. Yesterday, in the Costco parking lot, people ran past me like mad dogs, trying to make it to their cars without being drowned. I just loaded groceries into the trunk, soaked to the bone and resigned to it. I believe Alabama is becoming subtropical. With any luck, we’ll become a new rainforest, maybe acquire a few howler monkeys and toucans. 

    Lake Martin is as full as I’ve ever seen it, and driving down yesterday, I crossed a bridge over Lake Purdy where the water lapped the edges. The only disappointment this weekend may be that no one in our party gets to ski, but rain won’t keep us out of the water unless there is lightening.

          I feel like Max in Zafon’s story—time pauses when rain comes down in sheets. It gives us permission to pause, too. Permission to be quiet and listen. Even the birds are silent this morning, no doubt huddled in their nests with backs against the storm. After almost two years of frenetic activity here at Lake Martin, when the most fortunate city-folks waited out the pandemic at their lake houses, today the water is moved only by raindrops. Even the marina is silent—the owner taking a breath and for once appreciating lack of business.

          It’s a September Saturday. There will be football games today—Alabama at Florida, Auburn at Penn State—nothing else matters. So many televisions will be tuned to games, we’ll probably have a black-out in the grid. There could be two feet of snow falling outside and no one in this state would notice. As for me, I’ll be on this broad screen porch with a cup of coffee watching the rain smacking lake water and chatting with friends. Pausing, listening, at peace with the world. I wish you were here.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane