Thanks to the rain ~ May 19, 1994

by David Heiller

It rained all day Saturday, a light mist of a rain. Some people probably cussed at it. But from the garden it made me glad. That’s where I spent most of the day, shoveling, raking, tilling. My T-shirt stuck to my back like, well, like a wet T-shirt. My gloves got coated with mud. So did my boots, and the rake and fork and tiller. We were all one soggy mess.

But the rain felt good, all six-tenths of an inch.

Kids love the rain.

We weren’t exactly in a drought. It had snowed eight inches just 17 days earlier. But the potatoes and lettuce and peas needed a drink. So did the corn and alfalfa. So did the roadsides along Highway 23, where train sparks have sent firemen a-scurrying and trees a-dying.

So did the perennials that Elaine Pearson and Dorothy Nelson gave me last fall, forget-me-nots and delphiniums, primrose and daisies, and a bunch of others that I can’t even identify. Their leaves sprinted out of the ground with the rain.

We heard it start in the middle of the night. Cindy woke me up at 4:30 a.m. to say, “Listen, it’s raining.” There’s nothing better than lying in bed next to your lover and listening to a gentle rain fall on the roof over your head.

The rain didn’t stop our children. Noah was out on the driveway with his trucks and cars, wearing my rain coat and making grader noises and explosions for when he blew up the graders and trucks.

Malika came out onto the deck and skipped rope. “I did 23 backwards,” she called out to me in the garden.

“Great!” I answered.

They played with determination. Noah rode his bike over to Malika and said something, probably about guns and dirt bikes. Mollie lifted her chin and skipped on. Nothing beats skipping rope to an eight-year-old girl.

Rain doesn’t stop anything. The leaves on the trees seem to grow before your eyes, a bright and delicate green. The peas that you barely saw poking out of the dusty garden inch upward out of now-black earth. The farm fields that have just been seeded look ready to spring to life.

Oh rain! Oh joy!

Birds swoop and sing in the rain, feasting on mosquitoes, which in turn are feasting on me. Unfortunately, the rain brings bugs to life too. Orioles and hummingbirds politely take turns at their sugar water bar, while goldfinches and rose breasted grosbeaks gobble down sunflower seeds at theirs.

My thoughts turned to the Boundary Waters, how pretty that is in the rain, the pine trees and moss on the rocks and gray water full of rain drops and life. I’m heading that way with three friends this week, for the seventh straight year.

The rain made me think of those three friends, and of fishing for northerns in the Kawishiwi River. I thought of that big one Dave had on three years ago, how Jim missed it with the net when it made a pass at the canoe. Then it spit out the hook in Dave’s face like a guy that just hit a three run homer.

The rain makes me think of people like Elaine Pearson and Dorothy Nelson, how nice they were to share their garden plants and their knowledge with me.

The sun came out on Sunday. My rainy day thoughts came to an end. I was glad for the sunshine. But it’s nice to give thanks for the rain too.