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Rainy Day Girl

I am happiest when it rains. Maybe it’s because I’ve lived most of my life in the soggy Pacific Northwest, but I don’t think so. Something tells me I would likely seek out the calming hand of rain if it hadn’t found me first. As a child, one of my favorite things to do was hop-scotch through puddles on my way to school. In college, the dependable tip-tap of rain on the dorm roof was a comfort to a girl getting her first taste of life away from home. Now, I do my best writing wrapped in the blanket of a cool, gray, mizzly day. For you non-natives, mizzle is a cross between mist (a fine rain) and drizzle (a slightly denser rain). We Pacific northwesterners like to categorize our rain. After all, we have plenty of time to study it. That’s not to say I don’t long for the light and warming touch of summer sunshine. I do. But if it stays sunny for too many days in a row, I start to scan the extended forecast on the TV news for those precious drops. I don’t understand why people complain about the rain. We need it. Water is our lifeblood. The Earth is two-thirds water. We are two-thirds water. There are many who claim Seattle is two-thirds water. They are also usually the ones with the best jokes (What does daylight-saving time mean in Seattle? An extra hour of rain). As we say ‘hello’ to summer, I am listening to the lullaby of rain on the window, interrupted every now and then by my snoring tabby cat. And I am relaxed. And happy. And writing.