Answering the phone:
“How are you” she asks, waiting for the typical pat response. I intended to give her one and said “I am good... it's raining” like someone might say “I am good... it's Friday”. It didn’t occur to me that the statement was unusual until she asked “Why?” sounding confused as to the correlation between rain and my happiness.
I paused for a second trying to think of a way to compact an entire life’s association into one proper “how ya doin” kinda response. Only I had never really given it thought myself. It has just always been. I don’t remember ever not liking the rain. I strained for an audible response though and thought back as far as I could, searching for the source, any possible motivation for my favor.
I remembered the rain gutter in front of my house as a child; floating leaves down it and pretending they were boats. It was my own private river. I thought of my mother and how she used to make popcorn whenever it rained declaring it better than a movie. We would all sit out on the patio and watch the storm praying it would come down harder and that it wouldn’t end too soon. It was our own little party. The lightening was our fireworks show. I never thought there was enough of it. I also thought of my grandmother and my last memory of her. I was about 7 and we were visiting her when a summer storm hit. I remember her laughing as we all stripped down to nothing but our undies, her in her bra and slip, as we ran barefoot down the stairs of her apartment complex to dance half naked in the rain. “What will the neighbors think?” my mother laughed at our figures retreating into the storm. Grandmother half turned, threw her head back, her long dark hair blowing wildly in the wind, and shouted, “They will think, 'that crazy lady sure is having fun!'” I thought she was the coolest grownup in the world.
Finally I thought of my daughter who was sick with a fever last night. Everything was so still and quiet, it seemed we were the only ones in the whole world. She cried while I rubbed the perspiration from her forehead with a wet washcloth. Then the rain started to fall. I got up and opened her window and watched for a second as her curtains blew back and forth. There was life in the house again. Her body relaxed and I held her as we listened to the familiar pitter-patter of the rain falling into the rose bush outside her bedroom window. “Isn’t it beautiful?” I whispered in her ear, knowing that many of her young memories of rain mirrored mine. She finally fell asleep comforted and what would have been a hard night suddenly wasn’t so bad.
The woman on the other line was still waiting for a response as all this flashed through my mind. “I don’t know why I like it” I said, “I just do”.