the rain reminds us

The rain is probably my favourite season. Jumping in the puddles takes me back to the muddy footsteps that would leave prints the way to my doorstep, jumping in the puddles takes me back to who I was in the rain. It knows a side of me that’s full of purpose because it expects nothing of me, only to relinquish in its roaring power and feel it as my own. Mangoes grow ripe and the smell of soil as the rain pours in is the closest I have ever felt to earth, hope springs eternal as the earth gives back what it had taken. The smile on my face grows wider as each drop trickles down my face, my best friend and I dance till our lungs give out, not thinking we are finite. The rain has seen us grow each year, it is the only thing that knows us for who we are in our moments of mortality. With the pouring rain, each year lightning strikes and we look up to think that the universe is taking a picture of us to look through our years together, I’d like to believe somewhere up there is a compilation of our lives, of our tragedies and how they got washed away in the rain, of how the rain and our teardrops became one and then none at all. The rain is universal, it lets us know we are never alone, it tells us days with a million stories. About the woman sitting on the bench that once meant everything to her, about the mailman running through the rain to support his family, about the children running in the park to savour the first rain. It creates a tradition we don’t let die, it tells us that, in this life, there is no slowing down. But on a blue moon, on a night pouring as heavily as any, we are reminded to pace ourselves and look at what we have missed. Maybe there is no turning back, maybe the person you were when you danced in the rain at six years old doesn’t exist for you anymore, but the rain remembers. And it will remind you.