This has to do with the rain.
It' s rainy season in California once more. Let me re phrase. It's torrential downpour, flash flood inducing, drenching monsoon season in California. It's when the hills and homes around my own slide right off their own foundations and crash into the valleys below. It's when you hydroplane on your drive home, and you can barely breathe for the amount of rain soaking you to your bones.
It's fantastic.
When the first rains come, it feels like a huge sigh of relief by the actual state. The rain is a welcome respite from the constant, insufferable desert heat waves, intensified by insanity-causing winds and ravaging forest fires that wipe out entire zip codes, entire life histories. Rain is the "oh finally". It may seem extreme to be begging for a flooded lawn and a river for a street.
But.
The rain in California is like nothing else. It isn't freezing cold, and it doesn't painfully pelt you. It doesn't turn to hail (often) or snow, and it lasts for days and days. Often, we get incredible lightning storms that stay in one place and light up the sky for hours on end. Those are my favorite. The day before I moved to college, I heard thunder clapping outside my window and rushed outside. The air was softly whispering around me, like it was promising rain soon....soon...
I looked up over the adjacent housetops to see streaks of yellow electricity, just for a split second, crack open the inky sky, exposing every wisp of cloud up there. My mom had heard me go outside and joined me, and we stood there for an hour and a half, silently marveling at the lightening that was lighting up the night. It's enchanting, these storms. The rain started to fall ever so softly...and I could feel it...that nascent sigh of relief, almost too quiet to hear saying "oh, finally...the water comes...oh, finally"
I miss that. Watching that rain come, watching it blanket the dead earth and giving the land something to hope for...it's not something you get to experience just anywhere.
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