So rain, finally, rain for my flowers and tomatoes and trees and weed-choked lawn. I think about the birds and squirrels and chipmunks and rabbits and wonder if they rush out to prance in the puddles and feel the wet droplets on their feathers and fur and faces.
I try to sleep, or at least doze. Rainy weekend mornings are a gift, and I cherish them. But the cat insists that I wake and feed her and listen to her mewl and chuff, so I acquiesce and make my way to the cupboard to fetch her a can of the food she likes best.
Next, it is time to grind coffee and measure the water and freshly ground beans into the old coffee maker. I knock a framed photograph into the open water receptacle by accident. After doing my best to shake the water out, I pry it open to rescue the small black and white portrait of me and my sister when I was three and she was a baby, old enough to sit and smile. It is a darling photograph. My blonde hair is long, pulled up in two ponytails on either side. I smile, seeing the thick fringe of bangs, as this is the style I wear now, forty-four years later. I'm sitting cross-legged, with one arm around my sister Laura. The photographer has propped my right hand over my heart, which is unnatural yet adorable. Thankfully, the photo dries well. I see my mother's perfect cursive lettering on the back, identifying the two of us, Rebecca Lynn and Laura Renee, for she gave this portrait to one of my dad's cousins and she in turn gave it to me as a wedding gift. The photograph has now outlived my marriage and the bath in the coffee pot.
With the rain still falling, I take a warm cup of coffee and A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway out to my rickety back porch. I plug in the strand of white lights that I outlined the windows with two years ago, then I turn on the small lamp with the rustic lampshade encircled with bent twigs. Candles next, lit with the tool I use to start the barbecue pit, and finally, I turn on my daughter's CD player. It's faulty, and crackles, and can't decide at which volume it will actually produce sound, but I figure it out and sit on the wicker couch with my coffee and my book to listen to Squeeze and watch the rain and read.
I never picked up Hemingway, as a requirement in school or by choice at a library or bookstore. I'm so happy to have discovered him now. I read and reread several passages on this rainy morning. The first from a bit of dialogue between Hemingway and his wife Hadley. "We're always lucky," I said and like a fool I did not knock on wood. There was wood everywhere in that apartment to knock on too." In the next chapter, he describes the changing seasons. "You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry night. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason." I read that passage at least three times, and again just now to transcribe it. Then the next chapter begins, "When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest."
True, so beautifully, heartbreakingly true. I remember myself as I was decades ago, listening to these same songs and kneeling on the floor in a fraternity house next to mine, working on a banner for Homecoming. I was so shy in those days, and didn't make conversation, only progress. Still, anything was possible and I knew I'd meet someone who didn't mind drawing me out and would enjoy listening to music together and taking walks and crunching leaves and eating a slice of pizza because that was all we could afford yet was just enough. It's harder now, to think like that, to believe in the inevitability of compatibility with someone, the sort that leads to talking and walking and holding hands and sharing a bed and staring into one another's eyes and smiling so hard because you can't believe your good fortune.
I unplug the lights, turn off the music and retreat indoors where tattered screens will not allow mosquitoes to unexpectedly drink in my melancholy. I wonder if feeling sorry for one's self sours one's blood. It certainly sours one's mood. So I force myself to think cheerful thoughts for I am truthfully so lucky, with two strong young daughters and a good job and a snug house and a sweet rainy Sunday morning to spend with my cat and my thoughts and my book.
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