I'm more interested in bringing on the rain in a literal sense, though. Tonight DC is soaked with rain, the kind that comes hard enough to permeate the solid pack of the soil and seep down fair enough that the grass finally gets its moment in the sun (or the rain) and can squish under one's feet.
I came home from work a few hours early today, wracked as I was with incredibly painful menses cramps. Menstruating has always been impossibly painful for me, and at 2:30 pm I found myself doubled-over in my cube, chin barely held above the desk of my little cubicle desk, pushing my knuckles deep into my abdomen in an effort to change any aspect of the waves of pain emanating from within.
It sounds a little strange, perhaps, but the power and implication of menstruation blows my mind. To think that women have all this strength inside of us, as well as the inherent ability to carry a living creature within our expanded abdomens - is that not phenomenal to contemplate? I don't think that I want to have children, but it is mind-boggling to me to think of the loss of blood and bodily tissue that ensues every month that the female body is not pregnant, and to think of the clockwork with which it occurs. I am very interested in science and in the natural world, and I find menstruating an oft-overdue reminder of our very status as members of the Animal Kingdom. We can pretend we're not, but there is nothing like the pain of menses to remind me that we're only in control of so much, and the rest is in our evolution.
At any rate, after attempting to continue my boss' upcoming magazine article and failing miserably, I inquired with my coworker in regards to leaving early, sent out an e-mail, and left. One seeminly-undending bus ride later and I was walking in my front door. I went straight to bed and slept an exhausted sleep, giving my body the full indulgence it needed to devote all my energies and attentions to the effort involved in menses, and woke up 2 hours later feeling calmer, soothed, and well-rested.
But best of all, I woke up to the sound of raindrops pinging off my air conditioning unit, my single window darkened with the grayish light of storm clouds. Rain. I have loved a good rainstorm since college, when I would sit out on my cooperative home's wide front porch, cup of tea in hand, and watch the storm move up and across the NY State Finger Lake that still feels like home. Rain to me is reassuring, cleansing, and a little blessing from nature urging me to stay inside, curl up, stay warm, be dry, and relish the moment.
I have favorite rainstorms, such as the one where my ex, P, and I stood out in the front as it pounded down on that same co-op in college, and reveled in the coziness, and the lush green that resulted, while a friend in his full raingear meandered down the road. There was the rain I danced in senior year of college, when P wouldn't accompany me (he didn't want to get dirty), but his mom told him if he loved me he would (it's true). Another rainstorm in college brought the tail end of a hurricane up our lake, and the dog I walked for $30 a week and I ran down over the high edge of road, towards the lake, to watch a literal wall of water come flying up the lake toward us, whipping my hair around my face, and causing massive branches to drop from trees, only to stall in front of my eyes, dissolving back into the lake as so many rain drops falling from a storm front that was no longer there. I love rain.
There was great rain in Alaska, too. I had the great providence to go backpacking in Denali with a dear friend for a week last fall, and it rained the entire time. I had a brand new backpacking tent which I swore up down and around would be big enough for the two of us - and it wasn't. We spent four days listening to the constant fall of diminuitive raindrops as we traversed two valleys of the beautiful land that is Alaska, during shoulder season. Luckily for us, we had good raingear, having just spent a summer living and working on the North Slope, but we spent the week feeling damp and cooking, eating, and living in the rain. At one point, cramped in our tent, wet raingear stuffed down deep into our sleeping bags (to bake it dry with our body heat), I just rolled over from where I had been reading, and began to laugh hysterically. My friend Greg's nose dripped incessantly, we both smelled awful (I, of course, opined that he smelled worse), and the rain showed no sign of stopping. We were camped high in a divot between two small peaks, next to a stream, and unbeknownst to me, the next morning the rain would turn into a light snow. I'm grinning just thinking about it.
On that particularly trip we feasted on a lunch of smoked cheddar cheese (Greg likes to eat well, as I do, while backpacking) and pita bread, and I remember the two of us crammed together on a hillside at midday, smushed behind a rock around which the rain flew horizontally, like a hail of bullets in an action movie. I raved that the pita and cheese were "seriously, Greg, the best thing I have EVER eaten!", and stood up at intervals, cheeks red with the cold, to turn and face the rain, allowing the little drops to hit my face like so many pinpricks before I collapsed down next to Greg again, giggling and hysterical with the sheer fun of it. My favorite picture was taken immediately thereafter, on the afternoon of our last day, as I stood in the front of the distant finger of a receding glacier and did my best to pose as if I were a great adventure, about to strike off into the unknown. The photo is dark with the cloudiness of the day, off in the distance my raingear is dark blue (making me hard to see), and there are visible raindrops on the camera lens.
To anyone else, it's a pretty poor picture. To me, it's everything I loved about life in Alaska, that week, that trip, and Greg. It's beautiful.
Tonight, however, under the garish city lights of Washington, DC, the rain presents no such challenge. Instead of journeying off into the wilderness or up the glaciers, I flopped down the stairs in my fuzzy black slippers, ten-year-old stretchy PJ pants, and a sweater that was my grandmother's, and I made myself first hot chocolate, and now a minty tea. I've camped out in our warmly-lit living room, on the couch just inside the picture window, so that if I crane my head back I can see the wet leaves of the trees illuminated by streetlights struggling to cast a beam of light sufficient enough to see the sidewalk. A bit of minty tea in a mug from my college, Aretha Franklin's Greatest Hits on the radio, and the comfort of my long-departed grandmother's sweater embracing me in its warmth and I am happy.
There is something to be said for the nights when you know with certainty that there isn't anywhere, in that moment, where you'd rather be.
