After The Rain

I sometimes question the accuracy of my childhood memories, who said what, when and where it was said, but not the rain. Of the rain, I am completely certain. It has always been so. I find each rain to be as unique as the time and place in which it fell. Within each rain drop lies the essence of where its been and the wind speaks of it to those who will listen. It talks of the thunderclaps and the lights that flash across the gray firmament. It talks of those who’ve come before… the times and places inhabited by them. It talks of the old while creating the new. When it falls, the rain revitalizes, refreshes all it touches. And I recall the rains that have come in every part of my life…. until the coolness of this morning’s fall washed away last night’s darkness, as I walked the dogs through the path worn bare by coyotes near the clump of fir trees over the barbwire fence and beyond lower pasture.

On that particular night, the night of the storm when Mamá heard La Voz de Dios, after the drumming rain, the angry thunder and the blinding light, I went to sleep and woke the next morning expecting life for me to be like that… different, refreshed, glimmering and new again. But it wasn’t so, not that I could ascertain. Instead, I woke with an insatiable appetite for discovery. Knowing I had so much to learn. Knowing I was no longer the child from the previous day. I looked around for the safety net of yesterday, the known history of a recent time to wrap myself within. From our disgraceful, dilapidated migrant camp, to my dismay, I found myself among infidels, those wanting little to do with what they didn’t know. At times, it seems, for some… poverty, the little they have is all they need to know and anymore is more than they can understand. The poor are like that.

A stranger to the magic, I was left to listen to the secrets of the rain and decipher the coded messages of La Voz that spoke to Mamá. Sometimes my child found them frustrating and confusing. I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d expected, but I naively thought I’d discover the answers written in the dust of the fields or the currents of water in the irrigation ditches. Impatience has always been my curse. Life is too short for waiting.