STORMS
about rain
Yesterday I spoke to one friend on her way to the barn to ride in the rain. Superb. Barn cats were winding her legs as we got off the phone. Later that day, I could hear the rain so clearly on my roof, drumming its sounds so insistently, that it seemed as though it was with me in the room. Because I have high ceilings exposed at the beams, it really resonates the sound of rain on the roof. It always gives me pause and makes me feel as though I am at a cottage and have been rained in. It gives me permission to read all day or burrow into a little project. It steps me out of clock time for its duration.
Yesterday’s rain was a spring rain, still tentative in its approach. We are not in yet for the wildly intense thunderstorms that roll through in this region. Those are yet to come and their intensity will put a person in their place in no time. How many porches have I stood on in awe of the force of an electrical storm passing through here? I can’t count. When there is a storm like this, I often go upstairs and lay on the floor listening to it hitting my roof like an angry temper. It is actually so beautiful to lay on the floor and let the force of that sound wash right over. A state of excitement, but also peace at the same time, as though on some sort of sheltered and intensely personal adventure.
I recall an afternoon when we first moved into our place, my friend staying with us, and a storm kicked up. I could hear the deluge on my roof and we were talking in the kitchen. She was doing some dishes and I was facing her across the kitchen island. Suddenly, I saw a small twister passes right by the window on either side of her profile. It literally moved between the houses. I yelled for her to get away from the window and we ran downstairs into the basement to take shelter. When the storm stopped (they are always quite short) we made our way upstairs all was well and intact. Then, we stepped outside. The entire street was littered with giant tree branches, all stacked up like a game of pick-up sticks. One pile was the width of the entire road and almost double the height of a person. There were piles like this not only littered in spots on our street, but on all of the neighbouring streets as well. Surreal. The entire neighbourhood emerged from our houses a bit dazed, trying to put together what just happened. The whole thing took about twenty minutes, and it was mind blowing to think that so much chaos took such a short amount of time.
Our back deck has an overhang above it from the upper deck, and so it is the perfect place to watch a storm. One can be outside with it, unless the wind is too strong, driving the rain sideways. Often, though these storms are so heavy that they fall straight down. A wall of water, and if this is the case, they are exceptional to watch. We are entering the stormy season for here. They are coming. Sometimes, you can literally watch them move over the Detroit river from one city to the next—a concentrated black cloud that is so specific in its drop zone, that the sky around it can often still be sunny. It is obvious when it starts to come your way when they are small like that.
My friend is staying here with me, and while talking to her at the small kitchen table in the studio, I was recalling for her some of the days I spent living on Pelee Island. It felt like a lifetime ago. Back then, the Anchor and Wheel restaurant had an adjacent screened in porch that was not used by the public, even thought there were a few tables out on it. It was tucked away past this amazing old victorian parlour room stuffed with antiques and a piano. I convinced the owner to let me dine out there, and would bring my computer so that I could write after supper. I wrote a lot of my first book on that porch, and often it would pour a rainstorm like the sky had dumped a bucket straight down on our spot to the world. One night, I tried to wait such a storm out on the porch, writing a little later than I had planned, but it just would not let up. Eventually, I had to just surrender to the pitch black night and the pouring rain. The farm house I lived in was about a ten minute walk from the Anchor, and so, I made my way in the black wet night down the dirt road in the middle of the crazy storm. It was so wild that is was comical. Dangerous, too though, and so noted. My pace was fast to running. Exhilarated from the disorienting nature of the walk, and wet to the bone, I entered the old farm house and shook off my clothes, dried off and lit some candles against the power outage that had occurred during my walk home. Once dry, I snuggled into bed with a book and read with a flashlight as the storm took out the rest of its fury.
It is storm season between now and early fall. Porch rain, book in hand. Floor laying as its sound washes over me. Build up, then relief. Orgasms letting go. Soon they will become break from the swampy heat, everyone on their porches to smell the freshness after a close day. Sweeping up the downed branches. Shaking it off. Feeling the aftermath of it like a wet sock laid across your face— the humid start of a new day. Soon. The trick with a storm is to get into it. To be willing to get wet. To lean into their intensity and be with their force for a while, while simultaneously taking shelter from it. It is both. To be respected, but also wondered after.
Oh, and don’t get me started on the rainstorms in Vancouver. They are a whole other rhythm of outpour. They are long winters of grey skies and penetrating cold. They are difficult to endure, honestly. A winter rain could last weeks without letting up. I had little tolerance for this, because the rainstorms where I come from don’t drag themselves out like that. In my years in Vancouver, I recall one day walking down the street from my house to the skytrain station an umbrella in my hand with the weight of rain so heavy on it that I wondered if I could keep holding it over me. The runoff water was so heavy, that I could not see in front of me at all past the perimeter of the umbrella. No matter how warmly I dressed, and with what rain gear, I felt the damp straight into my soul. That kind of rain has different business with you, that is for sure. I cannot say that I learned to like it, that rain, but I fiercely respected the way it could draw you into an internality so far in, that it drug out what spooked you from inside, whether you liked it or not. When people complain about the rain here, I just laugh while shaking off the drops. Living on the coast makes a person impervious to what is considered ‘rainy’ here.
Later in the week there is a long stretch of rainy days. Today is just going to be grey and cold. I will stay in and iron spring clothes and finish the last beaded purse repair. The bead repairs so far were all interesting in their own way, as they needed different approaches into the beadwork. All of them were slightly different in their design methods, and I had to look at each of them for a while to puzzle out a way into the repair. I left the easiest to last and only have one more small section to fix. I may even pull out my silver polish and sort out a few pieces whose patina has gotten too black. I want to cleanup the pieces I have so that I can list them after the spring clothing push. Looking forward to the upcoming storm days that my garden needs, and getting some raincoats on the decks at the shop.
Waving from the start of the spring rains,
Mel