Try to Remember the Sound of the Rain

Try to Remember the Sound of the Rain

Have you ever taken the time to listen to the rain? Have you closed your mind to everything but the sound of the rain falling from the sky on the roof, on the streets, on the trees?

Right now it is a sunny day and for all the world it looks like summer, feels like summer, smells like summer, yet it won’t be long before that ridge of trees just over there – beyond the old wooden fence – will blaze with beautiful autumn colors.

Time is passing quickly – summer’s death rattle can be heard everywhere. Summer will soon die and give birth to autumn. And it is autumn’s summer teasing that takes the mind backward. The day is so sunny and so bright — so much so that the colors of autumn already glow brightly in my mind amid the waning summer’s sunshine.

Now I go back and try to remember the sound of the rain. Can I?  Can I picture the lowering clouds and the dismal weak light of a rainy day? I imagine it is raining through the sunshine and the colors of autumn are dripping wet with rain.  I imagine days when the seasons trespass upon each other. When seasons transpose and the sun shares the sky with the rain.

I still can’t hear the pouring rain on a day sunny that escaped from summer and came to visit me in the fall. I can’t walk in the snow and remember the heat of a hot summer day.

Not really.

Imagine a day in the winter when the dour and timid sun barely rises from its dark bed of stars and comes to see us only for a wisp of time. Before you know it, you are sitting in the dark again, furnace blower blowing hot, heat swirling desperately fighting to vanquish the icy tendrils of winter that come sneaking in through all the cracks and crevices you can’t see and can’t seal.

I can’t get warm no matter how high I turn the thermostat because the cold has buried itself in the marrow of my bones. My cold fingers reach for the blanket and then my arms and hands reach for another and I pile them all on in layers as some kind of armor against the cold – against the night. But no matter how many layers of blankets I bury myself in, they can’t protect me against the wild will of winter.

Winter’s secrets and sentries have come and they have entered me like a thousand tiny icy fingers piercing every inch of me and finding purchase in my old aching and tired bones. Winter takes its toll and if you’re not careful, it will break your soul and a thousand warm spring days won’t be enough to wash winter’s cold bitterness away.

Across the field of tall green grass stands a long lonely fence of old wood. It is gray and porous; bugs have been eating it away for decades, but it still stands as a barrier keeping things in and keeping things out. It still defines where something ends and something else begins and its young shadows still dance on the tall waving grass.

I try to hear the sound of a rainy day that I memorized a hundred times, but I cannot hear the pounding rain roaring as it splatters on the grass and the leaves. I can’t feel the puddles in the street or the cool wetness on my bare feet. I can only faintly remember the sonorous sound of the rain pounding on the roof of my old and sad house.

I can barely remember what the flashes of lightning looked like as they ripped the dark and somber sky apart like a blazing knife. I can’t remember the sound of the thunder, its low rumbling growl is hard to hear in a world of sunlight on a perfect late-summer day, here on the cusp of autumn.

Our time is borrowed like autumn borrows a beautiful summer day; stealing a day from another season. We only vaguely remember the days when we looked at the world through the eyes of a child – full of wonder, full of trust. Days when mud puddles were oceans and when caterpillars were pets. When lightning bugs amused us for hours with their mysterious but beautiful dancing light. When each season was welcomed for its own sake and when the night was a time of sleeping; a time of serenity and peace. Lying in our beds safe in knowing our parents would keep us safe and warm, we were free to dream the dreams of children – the dreams we never dare to dream when we grow up.

We can no more remember what it felt like to be a child than we can remember the sound and the feel of the rain when we are in the middle of a beautiful sunny late-summer day like this one.

Even though we can never really do it, we should always try to remember the sound of the rain.

Try to remember the sound of the rain.