As You Like It: Rain, Rain

I swore to myself that I would not write about the weather; after all, what could be more boring than writing about the weather for God’s sake? Maybe talking about the weather, and that’s exactly what everyone in Boston has been doing for almost two weeks now. That’s because New England is proving Mark Twain wrong this month. You remember what he said? If you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait ten minutes and it will change — or something to that effect. Well, we’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting, and all we’ve gotten is rain. I admit that sometimes it changes to mist or fog, but it’s all basically the same soggy mess!

A few weeks ago, my class read one of my favorite short stories, All Summer in a Day, by Ray Bradbury. He imagines Venus as a planet where the sun appears for only two hours every seven years.

Thousands upon thousands of days compounded and filled from one end to the other with rain, with the drum and gush of water, with the sweet crystal falloff showers and the concussions of storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the islands. A thousand forests had been crushed under the rain and grown up a thousand times to be crushed again. And this was the way of life forever on the planet Venus…

We talked about what it would be like to live in a place where it was forever raining. We all agreed that eventually we would go mad. None of us could conceive of a life without sun. In the story, Bradbury describes a class of nine year olds who can’t remember it at all. Only one of them, Margot, who had come to Venus with her parents when she was older, remembers it. The constant rain had “washed out the blue from her eyes and the red from her mouth and the yellow from her hair. She was an old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away.” The other children bully her because she once lived on earth and knew the sun’s joys. When the sun’s two-hour time finally comes after seven sodden years, they lock her in a closet out of sheer spite.

I know it’s ridiculous, but I’m beginning to feel like Margot. The rain has washed all the color out of me and left me wanting to do nothing but sleep. I walk to work each day and see the white and pink crabapple flowers that had recently filled the sky now covering the sidewalks in a dripping, slippery, mess. None of the dogs being walked want to stop to say hello and sniff my hand — they keep their heads down, determined to finish their walks and go home. I put my umbrella up and then feel silly because I’m the only one with an open umbrella, so I close it only to feel the mist settling on my shoulders and soaking my coat. This morning I wore a hat and kept my umbrella open for extra measure. I was tired of arriving at work looking like a drowned mutt.

Since it’s May, the city of Boston has long ago shut off the heat in all of its buildings, so there’s the added pleasure of being not only damp but cold as well. It reminds me of winters in Israel when it would rain for weeks and the cold would settle in your bones for days. Yesterday it was so cold in my classroom that my chalk kept breaking against the board in my shivering hand. We decided that the warmest place was the elevator, and I seriously considered moving the class in there. Today I’m wearing a turtleneck sweater, but it’s not really helping.

I’m so sick of listening to myself complain. I keep reminding myself that our trees look absolutely lush, our fuschia is a crazily budding invitation to hummingbirds everywhere, and our lawn, or what passes for a lawn at our house, is as green as it’s ever going to be without putting down astro-turf. I’m also grateful that we’re getting this weather now and not in June, because each year after Memorial Day I plant my impatiens and geraniums and would hate to lose them to a deluge. That happened one year when, after I had spent more money than I care to remember, all of my plants were washed out by a rainy June and I had to replace them all. Hopefully this rain will be a memory by next month.

And I keep reminding myself to be grateful that I do not live along the Mississippi, where I could lose my home at any moment to a cresting river. Nor am I in the midst of a draught where wild fires are threatening. I am here in New England, where all we are living through is a mildly uncomfortable dampness and lack of sun. Surely I have some backbone in me to withstand these minor discomforts?

That’s what I’d like to think of myself, but in reality I am miserable. And if the sun came out now, I would behave like the children in Bradbury’s story, “squinting at the sun until the tears ran down my face, putting my hands up to that yellowness and that amazing blueness, breathing that fresh, fresh air and savoring everything.”

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Posted by Joan Florek Schottenfeld on May 25 2011. Filed under As You Like It, Featured Content, Opinion. Both comments and pings are currently closed.