Rain, rain

It never rains in California.

Actually, I remember two rains in my childhood. Once, when I was in first grade, it rained and the gutters backed up and the streets flooded. My mom remembers a neighbor coming down the street in a skiff, but I think that must be a memory from her childhhood, not mine. And then once when I was a teenager, it rained. And actually thundered and lighteninged. Wow. THAT was something to behold. We sat out on the porch and watched it. And someone dragged one of my sisters through the mud in the front yard.

What it does do in California is what you or I might call a steady drizzle. The drops hit the windshield and spread to all of a quarter of an inch, or so. And its hard to decide whether to set the wipers at the fastest intermittent and put up with a few seconds of blur between wipes, or set them at the slowest steady and put up with the squeaking as they drag across an almost-too-dry windshield.

It has been drizzling all day. When I picked up the children at homeschool co-op, Carlson's teacher said he had "gotten soaked" at lunch. Wouldn't come in out of the rain. I expected him to be wrapped in a blanket or somebody's coat, with his clothes in a plastic bag. But he was fully dressed in the garments I had put him in this morning, and when I hugged him hello, I could not detect that he had been wet at all, let alone soaked two hours earlier. "Soaked" must be a relative term, as "rain" is a relative term.

It has been doing what passes for raining here, as I said, all day. When I left the house to pick up the kids, the spot under the car was dry. This on a sloped driveway after four hours of steady rain. I laughed out loud.

The first time I ever saw it really rain was in Texas. I called it a storm and the locals laughed out loud. Right in front of me. That spring I experienced a storm, and spent part of it under the bed. (The radio had said, "Tornado Watch" which I later came to realize means "It's raining pretty hard and there's some thunder and lightening, but go about your business and if tornado conditions develop, we'll let you know.")

But where it REALLY rains is Oklahoma. I kid you not. I know you grew up with stories of the dust bowl, and you think of Oklahoma as that forsaken stretch of I-40 that connects Texas to Arkansas. But I tell you what, it rains in Oklahoma. If we had a day like today in Eastern Oklahoma, people would be saying, "I wish it would go ahead and rain if its gonna, and quit threatenin' about it." We'd be trying to decide whether or not to go cut firewood in this drizzle. And we certainly would not be worried about the kids getting soaked.

On a visit to Oklahoma, before we moved there, I saw it rain. My then-husband and I were out in the woods, looking for a likely place to build a house. I felt something hit my head and thought I had been shat upon by a rather large bird. The whole top of my head was wet. Turns out it was a raindrop. One raindrop. I heard it hit my head. PLOP. Then I saw some hit the ground. The footprint from one of those buggers was a good two inches in diameter. By the time we made it the fifty feet or so to the car, we were soaked. Honest to goodness soaked to the skin. No standing in front of the fireplace to warm up; we had to change our clothes. I was taking a poetry class at the time and we were doing a unit on Haiku. I got back to Texas and wrote:

liquid crystal balls
dive-bombing forest, field, stone
Oklahoma rain

Right now, I can hear the rain hitting the ground outside my window. People here would say, "It's raining hard." They would have their wipers on low steady. They would be unable to fathom having them on high, and still not being able to see to drive. Pulling over on the interstate and waiting it out for an hour, because its impossible to procceed in almost-zero visibility would be unheard of. For fog, sure, but rain? That's a hurricane. (The distinction between a hurricane and a tornado is lost in the translation. Don't try.)

Years ago, in Oklahoma, we spent a night in and out of the hall closet when a tornado actually did touch down about 30 miles from our home and was headed our way. We had a closet, about four by four, which was the only "room" in the house that didn't have an outside wall. There were seven of us in there because we were keeping a friend whose mother had gone on her honeymoon. The radio was blaring at us to "Take cover! If you are in the coverage area of this radio station you must take cover immediately. This is not a drill. This is not a warning! You are in danger. You must take cover." We listened as they named town after town as having been hit. We were right in its trajectory. Eventually, we HAD to open the closet door, or suffocate. My little three year-old (now eighteen) crawled out as soon as she had the chance. I told her she had to come back in to the closet. It wasn't safe out there. She said, "I have to get my Binken." I said, "Oh. OK. We can get your blanket if that will help you feel better." She said, "No... we have to get my Binken because the rain monsters are coming and the man said we have to take covers." The tornado passed about half a mile from us. It picked up a trailer house and set back down. On its roof. Killing the occupant.

It never rains in California.