That's because our day of clinicals was canceled due to our instructor being ill, and the icing on top of that was the fact that it rained. Hard! So, I got to stay home and enjoy a gray, gloomy, rainy day, and I felt happier than I can remember in a long time. It was such a gift it was practically Christmas!
When it was time to go pick Conor up from school, I decided to walk in the rain. As I walked, umbrella angled against the rain, and sometimes successfully clearing the rushing water I had to jump over to cross the streets, I wondered why it is I love the rain so much. I honestly doubt if I would ever tire of it.
I realized that, for me, as for the earth, the dark skies and downpours have a cleansing effect on my soul. I am emotional. I crave melodrama. I need time to contemplate and reflect, with even amounts of celebration and regret. I need to purge sadness. I need to pull out all my sentimentality from time to time and feel it drip and run all over me, and bring with it tears. I need a good cry, for no good reason, and for plenty of reasons all at the same time. I need to feel things, and feel them deeply, and that helps me feel alive.
Rainy days are more honest to me, especially living in southern California where the sun pretty much dominates the weather forecast. Rainy days are real. They make me look at things in my life with more discrimination, and they rejuvenate me. I am grateful for the replenishment the rain brings to the earth, and to me. I get all kinds of happy with even the threat of rain, the promise of rain, the anticipation of rain.
So, yesterday was a gift. I got up even earlier than I normally do to cook a favorite breakfast for my children and have it ready before I had to take Aiden to the bus at 6am. I was so tempted to keep them all home from school and just enjoy one another. Instead, I busied myself with caring for them while they were gone: tidying the house, taking care of me (me happy and cared for = them happy and cared for), and then I pulled a chicken out of the freezer and set to making chicken noodle soup and rolls to warm them once they came home. Though I didn't forego my studying entirely during the day, it felt so good to just be home, to slow cook nourishing food--to let the water become broth, to let the yeast swell.
Thank you, rainy day.
3 comments:
I feel the same way about rain--although we've had too much of it here this year! What a blessing an unexpected day off is. Good for you for making the most of it.
I feel exactly the same way... but you put my feelings into words better than I ever could have. So glad you were able to stay home and enjoy the rain.
I love rain! Especially the all-day kind that falls gently under a chaos of dark clouds. It soothes me. I never really appreciated rain, until I moved to Droughtland.
Hey, did you hear about Hannah's new cookie business?
And did you hear about my pulmonary nodule? Lookin' grim for me now.
Love,
Dad
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