It’s been raining for most of the night, all morning, and will continue for several more hours. This sort of puts the kibosh on my plans for the day, but one thing I would never say (or even mean) are the words to that old ditty, “Rain, rain, go away.” In a drought-ridden area, we need all the rain we can get, even if it’s inconvenient, even if it overruns the drainage system. (The poorly conceived drainage system, I might add.) It’s a good thing I don’t have to work today. The last time it rained so much that the gutters overflowed, it took me more than thirty minutes to trek the two blocks to where I work. Actually, that day it was more than two blocks. By the time I detoured around all the flooded areas, I must have walked close to a mile. Luckily, I brought an extra pair of shoes that day, so I didn’t have to wear wet shoes while I was there.
[I took a break here to look up kibosh. It’s one of those English words that’s been around for a long time, since the early nineteenth century at least, though no one knows where it came from. One interesting theory is that it’s from a Gaelic word meaning “death cap,” which could refer to either the cap the judge put on to pronounce sentence, or the black hood that was placed over someone’s head before they were hanged. Hanging, for sure, would put the kibosh on someone’s life!]
My mention of things I would never say reminded me of an anecdote I read the other day. A new mother was at home recuperating from a Caesarian section. The father had to go to the grocery store and took the baby with him to give his wife some rest. An old woman came up to him and berated his absent wife for letting him take the baby. He responded, “My wife died in childbirth.” That shut the old woman up, but it gave me the shudders. I would never be able to say anything like that for fear that I’d go home to find the person dead for real.
I suppose it’s superstitious of me to refrain from saying certain things lest they happen because generally things don’t happen that way. Words may not really have that sort of power, but they are powerful. Just think of what happens when you tell someone you love them. Now those are magical words!
But I’m getting off the topic of . . . whatever my topic was. Rain, I guess, since that’s what I started with. It’s kind of nice having such a rainy day since nothing can be done. Well, things could be done, such as the errands I was going to run today, but there’s no reason to brave the weather today when tomorrow will be warm and sunny though probably very humid.
I have a couple of unread library books, a cozy place to read, and lots of tea. Sounds like a good rain day, to me.
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What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?
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ack of myself — I could be anywhere. At times, it’s disconcerting to realize I am so very far from where I’ve lived the past few years, so far from anything familiar, and yet, in a way it’s all familiar.
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