OCR Text |
Show Ifs raining, it's pouring I Except when it comes in the middle of the busiest month in ages in a ski resort, a gentle rain is really a very welcome thing. On Sunday, as I watched the rain come down outside my window, I tried not to think what it was doing to the snow. (After all, I reasoned, rain usually turns to snow in the mountains, and in time, this would, too. ) Given the right set of circumstances, rain can make me smile. It comes so rarely to the mountains in the winter (thank God, actually) that I tend to forget I grew up in California, where rain was the only weather we got in winter, other than just grey skies. Mother used to say, "Don't forget your slicker and your rubbers," meaning, of course, my raincoat and galoshes. I did fine until I hit junior high. Then, as any parent can tell you, children become simply too cool to care about things like staying dry and warm. My own middle school children have followed their mother's lead it must be an actual blizzard before they will consent to wearing the very expensive snow boots we purchased at the beginning of The Season amid promises they would ALWAYS wear these boots whenever it snowed. HA! Rain can be romantic. No, really. Think about Gene Kelly hanging off lamp posts and jumping in puddles and (here it comes) singing in the rain. Think of Eliza Doolittle making her great break-through with Professor IHiggins and finally saying to his delight, "The rain, in Spain, stays mainly on the plain." There is something a little crazy but memorable about holding hands and walking with your special someone in the rain. The first time I say whales migrating was in the rain at Pt. Reyes in Northern California. I was holding hands with someone new to me and special and we were standing at the edge of the lighthouse and, I was certain, at the edge of time and space and a beautiful relationship. (Young girls can be such wonderfully helpless romantics. ) I spent a lot of time growing up around the ocean and a grey rainy day was commonplace. It meant throwing on an oversized sweater (before it was fashionable) and taking long thoughtful walks, contemplating The Meaning Of Life. ( I was certain several times on those rainy walks. The Meaning was to be found in strange patterns in the sand or in abandoned homes of sea creatures who left behind their shells for my pleasure.) Any school child can tell you rain can produce that illusive, somewhat magical, creature known as the rainbow. Always just beyond your grasp, over the next hill, ending with its promised pot of gold Someplace Else. A fire, a good book, mellow music, and a curled-up cat, somehow go with rainy days forme, Sunday's rain wasn't blinding or threatening, but rather soft and gentle. It came as a surprise, and so long as it doesn't last, it actually was welcome. Sorta like the times you laugh, really laugh with the Pastor at church. You don't expect a man of cloth to be a stand-up comedian, but an occasional joke with us, and even on us, can be most welcome to break up a dry month of Sundays. And it strikes a vein with me that song about Rainy Days and Mondays getting one down is only half true for me. The rain lean handle, the Monday morning deadline for this column is another issue altogether. i |