I suspect I'm not the only one who has felt this way. That's why people move to California, or so I hear. And when I Zoom my friend in LA and his outline is crisp against the cerulean sky that is his background, yup, I understand even more.
I will caveat this poor opinion of rain by saying that when one is prepared for the rain-- i.e., without important papers or electronics, or perhaps with clothes that can whether the weather-- sudden heavy rain can be enjoyable in the cathartic sense that you just don't care anymore because everything is just so damn wet anyway. I've been caught in the rain enough times in office clothes in NYC-- somehow it never makes the forecast-- to appreciate the "singing in the rain" aesthetic. But sudden throw-your-cares away rain aside, I'm focusing now on the drizzly dampening creeping kind of rain that covers the sky all day like a weighted blanket.
My opinion of the rain began to change, maybe oddly, when my opinion of sunny days began to change. Spring in Virginia is at its best a mild breath before humidity's exhalation over the state, and on the sunniest, brightest, bluest days of the season I began to feel stressed and wary. For two months I had scrupulously avoided human contact, crossing streets preemptively to maintain six feet, six feet at all times, hissing at passing runners and bikers for no other reason than they were on the street to begin with and ruining my outside time, how dare they.
There is a wooded trail behind my parents' house that I began to avoid because it is narrow and on nice days there were so many people walking the trail that even if I hugged the other edge of it, perilously close to what I thought might be poison ivy, I still felt like I was inhaling virus. On nice days, entire families went on trail walks together, little kids and tired grandparents, and groups of five became groups of, alas, six when I joined the party for those brief passing moments.
And I was angry, because the wooded trails are infinitely better than roaming the sidewalks of our cul-de-sac'ed neighborhood (even if crossing the street facilitates social distancing), and these people were running me off the most beautiful thing about my parents' home. But then, I reminded myself, they were doing nothing more than what I wanted to do, which was to be outside and do something rather than staying inside and staring at a screen. So when my rational mind took over, I directed my anger and frustration instead at the logical enemy, the sun.
The sun. Damn the sun, bringing everyone outside, exiling me from my own walks.
And so, unbeknownst to me, the pendulum of my conditioning swung to the opposite end, and when I woke up today and saw the kind of drizzling damp day that before had been anathema, the killer of dreams, today I saw promise, an opportunity.
So I dressed in the most adventure-like of the few clothes I had bothered unpacking (exclusively things made of sweatpants material and nylon), put on a thick pair of crew socks, armed myself with a rainbow-colored umbrella and ventured into the morning drizzle (morning, because for the same reason that I had begun to hate the rain I had also begun to hate the afternoons and evenings, for bringing the after-work flock with them).
And it was like I had never seen the trail before. I'm probably late to the party on this particular observation, but hot diggety dog if things don't look green in the rain. I was dumbfounded by the sheer lushness of the forest as drops of water drummed on the surface of my huge umbrella. From house windows it looked damp and grey and dreary, so there was not a soul out there in the woods. I felt like Dobby who had just grasped a sock. My crew socks made me feel like an adventurer, my umbrella made me feel like a kid in a fantasy claymation feature.
I hopped across stones to cross the creek, which had not risen too dramatically, and watched the water flow alongside the path, colors magnified, somehow, like they had never been when the world was dry and dusty.
And I saw turtles! Two little guys with yellow and brown backs whose heads popped into their shells as I stooped to take a picture.
I'm inside now, and I can hear the rain undulate, intensifying and becoming gentler in a steady rhythm against my window, and for the first time in my life that I can remember I'm happy to be inside with the rain outside, maybe because I no longer feel trapped. I can go outside, and the world will not be depressing and inconvenient, in fact it will be lovely in my own company. A safe distance away from people, the drum drum against my umbrella marking the seconds that go by until life returns to normal.
And when that day comes, maybe I'll still be an all-weather kind of gal.
