By Sonia B. SyGaco
I see this morning's downpour, felt the sudden rush to go outside. The evening before, I counted sheep after sheep jumping over the fence. The drip-drop-drip from my rooftop comforted my tired eyes, lulling them towards sleep.
I seldom had the chance to go rain dancing, in the passing of time. In fact, there had been many rainy seasons, countless to remember. Or perhaps one would refuse to remember them? A child would never forget. It's only when the moment becomes insignificant that another event unfolds to replace a memory. Looking through the child’s eyes, one could see this carefree spirit, an attitude inherent from our past but beyond our reach. Was it because those little clothes would no longer fit us now? Or during the transformation something did really change and so we became hunchbacks besotted with myriad responsibilities. Living outside the comfort zone, we depended on the weather. What options could one have, but to get along with it? One could see an intersection - a choice leading the other but it only ended up in the labyrinth, and we were compelled to glance at the wristwatch.
One raises an eyebrow, seeing someone presenting something mediocre or cramming to pull things together. Or forgetting those little wishes and wishful thoughts of what tomorrow would be for us. It's simple to dream something complex: I could think of a window display artist, an advertising specialist or a war correspondent. Nonetheless, all the darts missed the red circles. The challenges continued, the rain smearing the glass windows.
Even now, I maintained the habit of letting rain fall my head, until someone beckoned me to squeeze in under an umbrella. Maybe I should be called an umbrella hiker. The rain shower constantly rolled my pants to knee length, as I waded and crossed the floods sweeping Manila. Sometimes, looking up became a crude way of knowing the sky's moods. Getting the warning ahead, all of us in the house would be reconciled to the ordeal of moving our things to the second floor. Waiting for the water to subside from the last step of the staircase, I set sail paper boats. It took hours, sometimes a day, to finally drain the flood gate. The merging wastes from everywhere: we had to buy mineral water to wash our bodies.
Even now, I maintained the habit of letting rain fall my head, until someone beckoned me to squeeze in under an umbrella. Maybe I should be called an umbrella hiker. The rain shower constantly rolled my pants to knee length, as I waded and crossed the floods sweeping Manila. Sometimes, looking up became a crude way of knowing the sky's moods. Getting the warning ahead, all of us in the house would be reconciled to the ordeal of moving our things to the second floor. Waiting for the water to subside from the last step of the staircase, I set sail paper boats. It took hours, sometimes a day, to finally drain the flood gate. The merging wastes from everywhere: we had to buy mineral water to wash our bodies.
The rainy season was annoying, yet there were moments when I would rather accept the humiliating remarks,”Where’s the rain?” But who cared? Well, they told me to break the rule of being an umbrella hiker. That I should bring one, gripping this rain gadget on a summer day. Else I'd have to endure multiple foot blisters from the scorching Penrith streets. I saw Aussie teenagers willing to tread on the hot roadbeds. The idea of being shoeless only happened in dreams, somewhat in fashion today. It was awful to see how they massaged lotion to soother the crack soles of their feet.
There is so much discussion about getaway or the passing of each season, which brings me to Sara Teasdale‘s Spring Rain. Love in the rain, for Teasdale, offers maturity and does not stay in a doll house, life being perfect. So the author recollects her love in moderation. It teaches her to handle disappointments from the storm that sweeps through them:
”I remembered a darkened doorway
Where we stood while the storm swept by,
Thunder gripping the earth
And lightning scrawled on the sky.”
Spring Rain rekindles her affection and anticipates another.
”With the wild spring rain and thunder
My heart was wild and gay;
Your eyes said more to me that night
Than your lips would ever say. . . .
Whereas Rain by Robert Creeley presents an enduring love, a floating restlessness. Using the rain to symbolize an uncertain happiness, the poet associates his intensifying love and suppressed emotions.
”All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quite, persistent rain.
What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it
that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me
something other than this,
something not so insistent--
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.
Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out
of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.”
The metaphor of rain stretches to Ernest Hemingway’s Cat in the Rain, a story of a defenseless cat left in the pouring rain. The woman becomes engrossed with having the cat, but to her dismay the cat disappears when she goes outside. She misses the cat so much and complains to her husband, who hardly listens. Cat in the Rain reflects the needs of a woman, her feelings and expectations.
Yet, people waltzing in the rain achieve more. It takes one to write a thesis in three months from the conventional one-year writing period, a single mother with four children, juggling between work and school, to become a lawyer, while another who washes his red shirt every night for tomorrow’s wear turns out to be someone influential. My nanny’s infant who was not breastfed but given coconut wine married a Swiss businessman. It is surprising, that this complex process gives birth to anguish then springs off - challenging the human spirit not to cross the river twice and instead aim for perfection.
© 2010 Sonia B. Sygaco
Sonia B. SyGaco is a fiction writer and holds a master’s degree in creative writing at Silliman University in the Philippines. Her creative works have appeared in Philippine Free Press and Philippine Graphic Magazine.
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