rain falls down

Lying on a cot in my grandparents' hotel room, curtains falling inches from my head, I listened in wonder to thunder. When Grandpa and Grandma's breathing slowed and deepened, I peeked my head up and peered out the window to see lightening strike across Geneva and its long, flat lake. I had just turned 13, and I had never known heat lightening.

We don't get heat lightening here. Our storms march down from Alaska, attacking warmer coasts. Our rain-- merely warmed hail--wishes to freeze again.

I've wanted to garden the last few weekends. Coming home from work on Wednesdays and Thursdays I've puttered a bit, sighed, and thought "In a day or two, I'll really get to work out here." But heat has punished the weekends: 95 in the shade, 100 in sun, 105 on the shimmering highways. So my garden limped through, thanks to midnight waterings and kind shade trees.

This morning, in my dream haze, I thought the empty house across the street blew up. I couldn't think of any other source for such a massive boom, no other source so loud that its waves broke car alarms into song.

But it was thunder.

* * * * * *

An alternate me steps into Heathrow, or Charles de Gaulle, or Budapest's Ferihegy. The transatlantic flight serves as a chrysallis, shifting my habits and moods from American to European. My need for personal space shrinks, my ability to understand French and Hungarian grows, I lose my last drop of patience for bad coffee. I speak differently, losing some of my Northern Californian nasality for clipped, mid-Atlantic speech. I am familiar, I am comfortable, I am a remembered, treasured version of me.

As with the rain. We see no rain between May and October. When a few drops fell on my friends' July wedding, we looked at the sky with confusion and astonishment. Such a strange event must be a portent. In a different age, we would have clasped onto those quick-drying drops and claimed them as a great blessing, or an awful curse.

But today, the rain falls gently. A crisp breeze meanders through the open windows, teasing furniture, and my toes. I packed away one of summer's fans, and choose a forlorn sweater from a forgotten corner of my closet. Rain awakens winter-me, whets my appetite for scarves and hot croissants. I sit differently in the cool air of autumn. I walk differently in boots and clogs than I do in Rainbow flipflops and bare feet. My coffee addiction makes sense again.

I woke this morning mid-metamorphosis, summer not quite gone, but autumn knocking. I'm still barefooted, but the steaming coffee whispers of fog and woodsmoke.