Reflections in the Rain

I sat on my balcony and looked out across the ocean. The wind had died down, and it was raining heavily. Occasionally I got a slight spray across my face. It had a slightly salty taste to it.

“God, I love the rain,” I exclaimed to myself.

It had not rained for several months, the longest dry spell on record, so they said.

I thought about how pleased the farmers would be that the weather had finally broken, medicine for their parched crops. Maybe they wouldn’t be pleased, though; they always seemed to have something to complain about.

“That was unkind,” I reprimanded myself.

Farming is a tough business. If they are not fighting the weather, the big chain supermarkets are screwing to the wall on prices.

I imagined two farmers catching up at the pub.

“Good rain we are having Jock.”

“Yeah!, bloody beaut,” the other would reply as he took huge slugs of his beer.

I took a sip from my warm cup of tea and thought back to the times when I was growing up in the country. They were the happiest times of my life.

I didn’t have problems to speak of, except deciding whether to go down to the river or out to my friend’s farm, where we would herd the sheep, irrigate the turnips, and pretend we were farmers.

Images of riding my bike coming back from spending the day at the river, flashed before me. You didn’t have to wear helmets in those days, and bikes were the ones you pushed, not these electric creatures that you see today.

My faithful but somewhat crazy dog ran beside me as we both tried to get home before the rain got worse. God, I love the rain!

I was snapped back to reality by a loud bang of thunder and lightning flashing out across the ocean. The sky was dark from the black clouds, the sea grey, and the lightning lit up the sky.

My two faithful little companions scurried back inside, frightened by the thunder. They settled on the mat just inside the door and looked back at me with a look that said, “You crazy bastard, come back inside.” I smiled back, God, I loved the rain!

Days Gone By

I turned his attention back to the sea and started to reminisce about the lonely days I spent when I was at boarding school. The friends I had there were not real friends; they had proven that over the years. None had ever kept in contact with me.

I thought about Roydie, who had been my only friend when I got home for school vacations. My parents were always working, and the other kids branded me a snob because I went to a different school.

Roydie and I had formed a friendship of sorts, more out of desperation than anything else. Roydie was branded as the town idiot. He was forced to stop school very early when his grandfather, who looked after him, suddenly died.

He had been left to fend for himself and while he had limited speech and looked like a hobo, he had a heart of gold.

He taught me everything I knew about fishing, and because I had a small dinghy, we became friends out of necessity. Roydie needed the boat to check his fish traps, his sole income, and I needed someone, anyone to talk to.

I recalled the times they would set out into the harbor in the pouring rain to go fishing. “Best time to go fishing,” Roydie would say in his broken English while he labored to get the boat going against the strong wind and current.

And Here We Are

I smiled as he took another sip of tea and remembered how scared I had been the first few times. But then, it had developed into such a peaceful retreat that I would look forward to when I could go out by myself in the pouring rain.

I looked around and reveled in the quiet and stillness, apart from the rain. It made me think about how alone I was, with limited friends to speak of, and coming out of a tragic marriage breakup.

I looked across at my two little mates, curled up beside each other. They were my saviors; they were my friends, I justified to himself.

I didn’t need anyone else, but God, I wished they loved the rain.

"Perfect weather for a walk around the beach in the rain, what do you say."

They looked at me with a look of horror, "You want us to go out in that weather, forget it!"

Till next time,

Calvin