DO YOU LIKE RAIN STORMS? WHY OR WHY NOT?

When I first unrolled this question I thought it asked how do you like rainstorms, which reminded me of the time, around Mother’s Day in 1993 when David and I were in the Houston area working on some of Valtek’s phone lines in an office they were opening there. I had stepped outside and it was raining, a very soaking, but not driving rain, gentle huge drops. It was warm! I liked it. I don’t recall ever experiencing that before. Warm rain. Wow, as great or greater than taking a shower.

I love rain. It’s refreshing, a gift from God, waters lawns, cleans the air, refreshes and renews and pours nutrients into the lawn. I love rain. I feel embraced by God in the rain.

The memories of rain take me further back to another rainstorm. Not the one David told me about when we were still newlyweds and he had just crossed a railroad track and then a lightning bolt struck the track and set the lights and alarms off and about scared him senseless. No, no. Much further back than that.

I think I was about 14 or 15 years old. Dad had met someone through work who lived in an area with a lot of hilly land. There must have been a lot of water there too because they had bamboo growing all over the hillside below their house. It was blocking their view and if the Santa Ana winds ever kicked up during a fire, they'd be in really bad shape. Dad promised to go chop that thick mess down and haul it away.

The promised day was a very rainy Saturday. I was working barefoot, slipping and sliding in the mud, hauling the cut bamboo back up to the truck just about as fast as dad was cutting it down. I think I didn't like having to be out there doing that. But I also seemed to recall a streak of stubborn pride about being able to make myself do it when I was sure then, and just as sure now, that most kids my age (then or now) would be willing to do that.

Dad later split the bamboo in half lengthwise (once it dried out) and made a facade wall with cut out window openings for fish tanks to butt up against. It looked really cool.

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