Monday morning, while walking on Truxtun toward the pool, I felt something land on my shoulder. “Bird,” I thought, although bird normally appears when the sun is out and you are congratulating yourself on a job well done or you are so self-absorbed that birds do not exist and neither does anything else.
When this happens, remember that pride goeth before a bird goeth on you.
I brushed my left and right shoulders and then the top of my head because I’d felt something on all three. Should this have been a bird, which it proved not to be, it was lucky because of its rarity and unlucky because it was unlucky.
This was no bird. It was water and not water from the sprinklers on Truxtun, neither the robust ones in the median strip nor the sprinklers greening the lawns for the dental, doctor and attorney offices that often run first thing in the morning.
It was raining. I had ranked rain third on the list in terms of probability because it had been so long. So long that rain had turned into a punchline when somebody mentioned its possibility: “Rain, what’s that?”
In order to confirm rain, I looked at the sheets of water on the sidewalk and shallow pools in the gutters from the sprinklers and saw the rain drops making their mark on otherwise smooth water.
Rain. I felt my neck and shoulders relax and my breathing became less convoluted. It was like a full body massage without the coconut oil.
The rain didn’t last long, but didn’t have to. It went from A Street to F — less than 10 minutes — but 10 minutes was long enough to bring the smell of wet dust, cool the air and raise the spirits of anybody lucky enough to be up and outside.
The volume was closer to a suggestion than a trace. A “suggestion” that in the midst of a hot, dry, son-of-a-gun kind of year, hope and optimism are not dead, they’re napping, and can be awoken by showers from up on high.
In the ocean, sometimes there are messenger waves in a set. Waves preceding the five or six waves to follow, that let the surfer or swimmer know that something is on the way and it’s possible that something will clean their clock.
This message is different. Different and less ominous. Rather than clean their clocks, clean, wash, lift and satisfy our parched, rain-hungry souls.
I’ll probably eat these words because I’m jumping to meteorological conclusions and it may be awhile for the storm wave to arrive but for 10 minutes, it seemed like the start of something. Something different, something better and something promising.
“Something” that will put out the fires and start the growing cycle. Something that will change the course of a gnarly year. Something that will begin the healing. Whether rain does all or none of them, it will be as welcome as the wings of a pure, white dove.
October 27, 2020 at 05:14AM
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HERB BENHAM: Sprinkle of rain whets desire for change - The Bakersfield Californian
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Herb
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