Story time.
When I was a little girl, 7, 8, maybe 9, all those years blend together...I was living in the Caribbean, in the "gut house", my paradise. I had a birthday, as happens once a year, and it was at my house. Lots of things can be said about my mother, but, above all, my mom can make special occasions fantastic. This year, she'd invited nearly every girl in my class at school. Everyone was supposed to dress up in their frilliest dresses and bring their favorite dolls (dressed in their frilliest dresses too, of course). And they did, and we all sat around the table on the deck in our beautiful dresses with our beautiful dolls, and we made crowns to wear, and we ate cake, and we were all beautiful happy little princesses. In the gut house, me and my family lived with a single dad named Bill and his son Jesse, who is one year older than me. Bill and Jesse, and my dad and my brother, had all been kicked out of the house for the day. It was just us girls.
It started raining after the cake. And Caribbean rain is not like the rain here. It's torrential, it's warm; it's a blessing from the sky, and it falls mercilessly upon the islands and the ocean, sometimes without warning. And so it rained on my birthday, a beautiful torrential monsoon. We were all little girls in pretty dresses; we were all Caribbean girls, and it was raining. And so we went out to play in the rain, because rain is wonderful. Most of us didn't make it out the door fully clothed; mom didn't want us to get our pretty dresses muddy, so, since we were practical children, we took them off and left them laying on the tiled floor. Some of us kept our panties on, but it wasn't mandatory. I think that was the best birthday I have ever had. There's something about running through the rain with your friends, most of you butt-naked, feeling the mud squish between your toes, and laughing. Always laughing.
And, at the end, Jesse and Bill came down the driveway, and we all ran screaming and naked through the rain into the safety of the house. Except for me, who, at the sign of a car, ran around the back, scaled the deck (naked, mind you) and let myself in the back way, donned my dress, and opened the front door as prim and proper as I could be.
It was raining today, and I jumped in a puddle on the way to the bank. It got my skull socks wet, and I could feel the muddy water trickling into my shoes. I will never, ever grow up, and that is just the way I like it.
3 comments:
good story :)
You rock. I went out Sunday and played football with a friend in the rain. I forgot how much I use to love playing in it. You would have hated it since it was a cold rain....but it was still so much fun.
I grew up in temperate Poland and Germany. It rained quite a lot there, though not necessarily warm rain. I didn't entirely love it, but I didn't mind it either.
When I moved to Montana in '95 I had a hard time adjusting to the climate. It almost never rains in the Eastern part of the state. That's when I realized how much I missed the rain.
Montana has drought and wildfire problems every summer, and now that I'm in NC, I have to say I don't miss that about Montana at all. It's nice to go walking with an umbrella in hand. I think rain is very soothing.
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