Solitary Spinster

It was raining this morning when I walked to work. A cold, late Fall, be thankful it’s not snow, type of rain. This is Pre-Winter rain. Cold, bleak… a rain that chills you to the bone. A foreboding rain just in time for election day! I voted anyway.

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I have lived in Saskatchewan, on and off, for many decades. I have made a study of the rains.

There are blustry spring rains. They are Winnie the Pooh rains; rains that tear the umbrella out of your hands and turn it inside out. These are the rains that drench you to the bone and are quickly gone but leave your socks soaked and your spirit damp. These are the rains that push Piglet and Eyore off the page.

There are calm summer storms; rains that last all day but fall gently on the earth nourishing it. Soft rains where you don’t need an umbrella because you don’t mind getting wet. This is usually a warm rain. This is the rain I enjoy walking through.

There are wild summer storms that race across the prairies drenching and raging at the soil. I use to stand on my balcony, at the edge of the city, and watch this type of storm slowly make its way into the city. This could last all day. I would see a rain cloud form miles away and hours later it still would not be here. It was a leisurely rain. It was enjoying taking its time. You had hours to prepare to go out into the rain. However, you did not want to go out for the wild storm would rage at you and leave you feeling destitute.

As a child, one of my favorite activities after the rain, was to follow the streams across town pretending that they were rivers and that I was smaller than I actually was. I wanted to be small and big at the same time. I wanted to tell the rain’s story by reading the streams.