Yesterday it rained a lot (it’s still raining/snowing off and on today actually…) but I was reminded of something that happened several years ago.
Several years ago, when I was first in my twenties, a new library had opened up near our house. My mother, my sister and I went for the day to get some books and a few other things done (we didn’t have internet at the time). It was raining so hard that the librarians had to turn off the automatic function of the doors into the library because the rain kept setting them off!
I’d never seen it rain so much in my entire life!
I had grown up in a desert that required extensive canal-work in order to make it livable. Luckily for me, the canal system had been put in about 100 years before I was even born, so that work was done already. I hadn’t ever really realized I lived in a desert because there were trees everywhere and though it was always really hot in the summer and we didn’t have a lot of rain, there were plants that wouldn’t have survived on their own initially in a desert.
Half a year before the library doors incident, I’d gone on a very long road trip with my family to California. (One of my sisters was moving there and we all drove her and her stuff out there because it was summer and no one had school. Getting work off was fun, but doable.) I had never seen so much green in one place! That was when it really hit me: I lived in the middle of a desert!
So, fast forward half a year.
It’s raining so hard we’re having flooding everywhere, automatic doors have to be turned off and someone manning them in order to let customers/patrons in and out of the building. You walk outside for one whole minute and when you walk back in, you’re soaked like you jumped into a swimming pool fully clothed. (Which was a funny story, but I’m not talking about it right now. And yes, we actually timed the one minute thing just to be sure.)
I wondered if this was what monsoon season looked like in certain parts of the world.
The reason this story was on my mind was because we had gone to the library to take care of some things and pick up a few books (gardening books are all the rage at my house right now…) and I was reminded of that day so many years ago. The rain yesterday wasn’t even that heavy, it just gave me a small feeling of nostalgia to remember a time when it had rained so hard.
I have never seen it rain that hard since.
Breathing In 