We Notice the Rain

Our summer turned to dust. And in a year marked by words like pandemic and quarantine and recession, even a lack of rain can grow in your mind to a plague of Biblical proportions.

Our grass is crisp and brown. The only green thing that thrives is our garden—helped along with regular watering. We talk about the well, if it will run dry. We watch the sky and check the weather and hope with every cloud for drops of reprieve.

And finally, those drops come. In thunderclaps and lightening, sheets of life fall to us. The kids pull on rain boots and splash through puddles. We fall asleep to the sound of rain against the roof. Hope in a year of plague. Rain in a time when you notice more than ever the drops that don’t fall.

Seasons turn to dust. And then rain comes. And with the rain, what seems dry and dead, comes to life again. A lesson for the garden and a lesson for my heart.

And this lesson too: Sometimes it’s the very absence of a thing that teaches us to notice. How easy it is to forget. If this year teaches me anything, it’s to notice and remember, to not take for granted.