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Walking in the rain

My neighbors probably think I’ve gone and lost it again. This evening, after spending the afternoon cleaning house and doing UNPAID work for my employer, I decided to go for a walk in the rain.

I love the rain. I love it when it’s cloudy and overcast and damp, and there’s a chill in the air. An ex-boyfriend dubbed it “Heather weather.”

It’s been raining off and on for several days and the sky has been a gray overcast. Last night I was supposed to join the two Tina’s for dinner, but as I was struggling to stay awake at work, I opted out and went home to bed. The cough still persists, and the allergy medicine that seems to help also has the effect of knocking me on my butt! I’m not sure which is worse, coughing all the time, or the fatigue heaped on the fatigue I already struggle with because of the medicine head.

So, I came home, opened the windows, and curled up in my quilt to listen to the rain. I fell asleep that way, cradled in the warmth of my quilt and lulled to sleep by the soft pitter patter of the raindrops on the pavement outside.

There is something about a soft, constant rain like that which is comforting to me. It reminds me so much of when I was a teenager living in Northern Germany.

When I was 12 my parents got divorced and the two years that followed weren’t happy ones. My grandparents had given up their house and moved to an apartment to give us a place to live. My mom had been a stay-at-home mom since I was born, so didn’t have a lot to take to the workforce. She worked full-time as a teachers’ aid and went to graduate school full time as well. We never had much, if any, money and mom was often, understandably, tired and cranky. I was entering junior high and was teased worse than I had ever been teased before. It was relentless and miserable.

So, when mom got a well-paying job in Germany it was like coming out of a dark tunnel. I loved high school, and I loved living in Germany.

We lived on the edge of a small village called Walhofen near Osterholz-Sharmbeck. Our house was along the top of a ridge that looked out over slightly rolling countryside dotted with lines of trees along the edges of the pastures that were typically occupied by cows. This was dairy farming country, and because of the frequent rain, everything was a constant emerald green all year round. My bedroom window looked on the “Tuefel’s Moor” (excuse me if I don’t remember the correct spelling). It was known as the “Devil’s Moore.” Sometimes the fog would set in and hover in the lower places on the moore, often in the early morning as Ryan and I walked to catch the bus to school. The smell of the rain would already be in the cool air and everything would be wet and heavy with dew.

Our house overlooked, among other things, a windmill like those you’d expect to see in Holland. Northern Germany is similar to Holland, with windmills and canals and low lying lands that fall below sea level.

And whether it was winter, fall or summer, there was always rain. It was rarely a storm (although sometimes in the winter storms would come in off the North Sea). Rather, it was typically a constant, slow, misty sort of rain.

I used to go for walks around our neighborhood, or ride my bike down across the moore. Many of the older houses seemed larger than they really were because the house would be built attached to the barn. Many, many, many of these barns were still around, half-timbered and made of red brick with thatch roofs which had long been covered with green moss. The one directly across the street from us was a working dairy, and the old barn (there were several new ones too) was built in 1776, the year my country had become a country. Others nearby were even older.

In the spring the leaves on the trees would seem to explode and a crop (I don’t know what it was) would bloom every year and look as though someone had taken a large bottle of French’s mustard and spread it out across the earth – fields and fields of these yellow flowers.

I used to never bother with an umbrella – what was the point? It was only water, and you’d inevitably get wet anyway.

And so these past few days of rain, and the smell the rain brings – the smell of wetness when it’s settled into the fallen leaves and earth all around – it has felt so much like those times to me and made me homesick for a place that is long since gone and was never really “home.”

I know everyone wants to offer me a ride in the rain (several did tonight) and there are times when it would be nice – but if I’m not carrying lots of packages, I actually like to walk in the rain. Tonight I got soaked through, and felt the most awake, alert, alive and calm I’ve felt all week. I really didn’t want to come home.

Comments

Whitey said…
So glad you visited my blog Heather. It is a blessing to meet an HPSer on this site, though I have two other brothers with it too. Yeah, I'm pretty sure my mom is the one you know. Small world eh? Anyway I have your email put in my address book so hopefully I'll talked to you soon. Yea!!
Whitey said…
So glad you visited my site Heather. It is a blessing to meet another HPSer on this site, though I have two btothers with it too. I think my mom is the one you know. Small world eh? I have your email put in my address book so hopefully I'll talked to you soon. YEA!!
Whitey said…
sorry i wrote you twice i just realized what was going on with your blog.

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