Quarantine has given me a new perspective when it comes to rain

If quarantine has taught me anything it’s that I am nothing if not a receptacle for memories. The repetition of days and nights has gifted me the realization that life is monotonous and jagged without my creative lifestyle. It’s always been this way, and I was a fool to wait to notice until now.

It rained today.

It rained today, and I remembered the electricity of divine juvenescence. Rain means so much, but it always makes me think of what was—and very, very rarely what is—never what will be.

This day, per usual, I thought of what was. I thought of the rainy days in the summer when rain was the biggest bully, and my quaint house was the vermilion, vulnerable victim. In this quaint house, rain was something scary. Rain would tarnish innocence and ruin stability.

I had yet to realize how beautiful the ruckus of rain was.

As it rained, I thought of the protocol associated with all precipitation, but mostly the pouring kind. I thought of the days when thunder clapped with hunger. The boom from the sky always seemed to come when the house was parentless—when pizza was for dinner but the pizzeria phone number was nowhere to be found.

The boom from the sky always seemed to come when we least expected it.

Yet, when the boom came, the telephone rang louder. It was always my dad and his fatherly voice booming from the other side.

Soon, it was all a race. Like toy soldiers, we raced throughout the house, following our father’s commands to close the windows and lock them tight. Never forget to lock the windows.

Then, the game was over. The phone call had ended. The windows were closed.

And locked.

Today, I watched the rain as I thought, and I let the windows stay open. I let the ruckus inside, and my room was a maelstrom.

I loved it.

It made me giddy.

I watched the timid rain, and I smiled every time I heard the thunder, but I never heard the phone ring.

The condition of the other windows was unbeknownst to me; all I knew was that mine were wide open.

And, in the absence of scattering toy soldiers and my father’s booming voice, I saw the scattering raindrops, and I heard the booming of my own heartbeat.

I let the rain in and the thunder, too.

And though the rain was a bully, I confronted him, and I loved him for everything I was taught should make me fear him.

Today, the rain made me think, and those thoughts were as booming as the thunder.