I feel happy when it rains. I even wrote a story (anonymously, of course) entitled “Rain” about how the rain, for all it can do, cannot hide your tears when you’re crying over your male best buddy who sees you as nothing more than a pesky little sister, or some such mushy plot like that. (My friends who had tragic love affairs (or so they claimed) lapped it up.) And my favorite OPM song of all time is Tuwing Umuulan at Kapiling Ka, which beautifully compares a consuming passion for a loved one with the unstoppable power of the rain. I used to barge into Rhoel’s room all the time and play his Basil Valdez CD of the song, and while at it do an impromptu interpretative dance of Kastilyong Buhangin. Which rarely amused him, needless to say. He’d usually just give out this exasperated sigh without even looking up from his PC.
I love the anticipation of something big just before the sky opens up, when everyone scurries around to take down blankets and stuff hanging from the clothesline, shut windows, bring out emergency lamps and batteries for the radio on particularly stormy occasions. And I love how the rain gives you the perfect excuse to be lazy, curled up in front of the TV or with a good, long book, updating your diary, going over old letters or scrapbooks or some other totally useless activity. You can even sleep the whole day, there being nothing much you can do and with the weather being so conducive and all. For me one of life’s greatest pleasures is slurping a steaming bowl of noodles while the rain beats down hard on the roof. It makes me realize how lucky I am to be so cozy while everything outside is being so harsh and unbearable. (Instant noodles are my favorite. They’re not very demanding, just add boiling water, and they taste so good, anyway. Even undomestic goddesses like me cannot possibly mess up instant noodles.)
Oh, but I do realize there are people who have a harder time at it when it rains, especially those who live out on the streets or whose livelihood consists of selling in the streets. My heart goes out to balut vendors who have to go around selling the thing on dripping, howling nights when they should be lying down on a dry bed somewhere, and little kids selling sampaguitas on wet, early mornings when the rest of us cannot even get out of bed. As soon as I get rich I’d buy all their wares and tell them to go to sleep.
I guess for grown-ups the rain evokes not so much happiness as melancholy and even grief. And it really does look like the sky is crying down buckets. But I look it as a sort of cleansing, so that at the end of it, everything looks new and fresh, like you are reborn and can start from scratch.
There’s an immensely sad song in Les Miz that goes, “I don’t feel any pain, a little fall of rain can hardly hurt me now, You’re here and that’s all I need to know … and rain will make the flowers grow”.
Rain makes the flowers grow. What more can you ask from it?
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