Our weather recently has been a combination of fierce showers, drifting smoky clouds, a promise of peach sunsets and glimpses of Tiffany-box blue sky in between — all in the space of a day. Living in a place that doesn’t have dramatic seasonal changes, I love this kind of meteorological drama. Wild weather shakes me out of my predictable routine, my comfortable rut. I like dashing through downpours, carrying my orange umbrella or wearing my silver raincoat that makes me look like a Space Woman. It reminds me of being a kid and playing outside in the rain, of not having completed that alienation between self and nature that takes makes us as grownups impatient with traffic jams during snowstorms, power outages caused by lightning, the inconvenience of getting our hair wet. Watching the rain clean the streets and sidewalks, gush out of gutters, drip from the eaves, bless the bamboo trees in my backyard makes me feel like I’ve had an old-fashioned baptism of immersion. One that washes away the accumulated grime and grit of dailiness and adultiness, that makes me feel like a green girl again.
