Rainy Saturday Riff

for everyone who has shed a tear today, or wishes they could

Well, there I go getting stuck again. To be fair, plans had to adjust when I lost someone very dear. I will write about him. But for now it’s overwhelming. I am overwhelmed with memories and stories and gratitude.

I also had a birthday and caught yet another viral infection.

And the world seems to be spinning in crooked directions, and that disrupts as well.

All of this and much more in the span of two weeks. Isn’t that how life is?

To spur my writing horse back to a light trot I’ll share what began as a dashed-off flow write from this morning’s silent session with

Janisse Ray

, who always inspires me. Even though little was said during the hour, I found myself, as I sometimes do, ending in tears. Natural and welcome, they continued through the rest of the morning, cleansing and merging with the rain. I consider them a good sign and another reason for thanks.

Photo by pisauikan on Unsplash

The Rhythm of the Rain

My mother’s station wagon pulled out of the First Methodist Church parking lot after she picked us up from kindergarten. I was buckled into the front seat, holding on my lap my tin Holly Hobbie lunchbox. At midday, the sky was dark grey as dusk. Rain drummed like heavy fists pounding on the windshield. The wipers waged complex polyrhythmic battle against the rain. They fought for upper hand over the relentless peck peck peck gunfire of droplets. The battle raged, obliterating my mother’s soft questions about our morning. The fog of the war of the rain obscured not only sound but sight, transforming the clear windshield into a busy haze of droplets around blurred and blinking turn signals and street lights of green, yellow, then red—all sparkling like jewels, like the dots that glowed a single color when I stared too close at the television screen. A startle of spray from the wheels skidding through deep puddles shot upwards against the rain’s assaults from above.

I was nestled—warm, dry, and safe in the soft, expansive seats of the station wagon, my little sister in the back—next to my mother who loved me.

We often heard Karen Carpenter over the car radio. I always thought it was Mama’s voice singing. That day the radio played Wings: Someone’s knockin’ at the do-or. Somebody’s ringin’ the bell.

The drums beat with the wipers against the raindrops and the blinking lights.

Inside the car, our hearts thumped together.

We were together.

We were safe because we were together.

We were together.

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