Welcome to Gaia! ::

Another story for you all! This one is a piece of non-fiction that I wrote for one of my classes. It's completely true. So, if you ever wanted to know more about me, voila!

Please, please give me suggessions. I know this piece is far from perfect and I desperately want it to be better. If you have no suggestions, just let me know if you read it, anyway. I appreciate it. <3
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One of the first things I learned about literature was the symbolism of rain. I was taught in Ms. Virtrano’s freshman English class that it meant ‘change’. My fourteen-year-old self took a while to fully grasp the subtle workings of literature. I had no idea that all of that ‘stuff’ had meanings separate from what they meant literally. I thought it was all pretty weird at the time. I thought Ms. Virtrano was out of her mind. “But…rain is…just…rain!” I thought.



I was born in Las Vegas, Nevada, the city and state with the least amount of rainfall in the country. My family made frequent trips to Milwaukee (which means “gathering of the waters”) to visit our relatives. On these trips to the land of humidity and pine trees, I was fascinated with the rain. To me, it wasn’t an everyday occurrence. It was a magical phenomenon that I had to explore. When it rained, I wanted to play outside just as badly as if it were a sunny day. My mother would watch me from the kitchen window as I walked up and down my grandparents’ driveway with a little umbrella.



I still can’t decide what I like more: the sound of the rain tapping on an umbrella, or the feeling of the raindrops soaking through my hair and finding their way to my scalp.



Shortly after my grandfather died, my mother divorced my father, moved back home to Milwaukee and bought a new house with grandma. I was about four years old at the time. I don’t think they took me to the funeral. I don’t remember shopping for a new house with mom. But I do remember the hail. It hailed like no other hail I’ve ever seen in my life, a torrent of large white marbles. I really wanted to go outside and see it, play with it, taste it, but of course I wasn’t allowed to. Two seconds out there probably would have knocked my little body to the ground. Uncle Vince valiantly sated my curiosity by going outside and putting a few pieces in a bowl for me. I kept the bowl in the freezer for quite a long time, peeking at it every so often.



After that, my childhood memories of rain (and hail) are limited to flashbacks of long walks home from school. In heavy snow, it was torturous. In the rain, it was absolutely delightful. I rarely, if ever, bothered to bring an umbrella with me. Not only was my memory too horrible to remember to grab one, I simply preferred not having an umbrella while caught in the rain. I enjoyed getting rained on, if it wasn’t too cold outside. I played little games with myself, seeing just how wet I could get before I arrived home. I had to make sure every inch of my clothing was equally splashed with raindrops.



I never got in trouble for coming home looking like I fell in a swimming pool. I just had to change into dry clothes when I got home so I wouldn’t catch a cold. And anyway, the muddy footprints I left on the kitchen floor were tolerable in comparison to my dog Bishop’s paw-prints. It’s hard to slow a large dog, named after a lake, when he’s exhilarated from getting rained-on. He would slide around in the kitchen, paws slick, and I would have to catch him before he made his way to the living room. I’d wipe the mud off of his paws with a rag, and towel-dry his fur. Of course, he always shook himself off after I messed with his precious fur, leaving me wetter than he was. I thought that his ‘lake’ namesake was very fitting.


I may have been thirteen, but I’ll be darned if I was too old to splash around in the puddles on the sidewalk. I didn’t exactly frolic, but I did make extra-hard stamps whenever my shoes passed through the water as I walked.


I only snuck out of my parents’ house twice in my life. Only twice. I’m sure it would have been more often if my parents weren’t such light sleepers. One time, it was to spend a few quiet hours staring at the stars with a boy. The other time, I didn’t even walk beyond the driveway. It was very late at night, and it was raining. I can’t remember how old I was specifically, but I was a teenager. I went outside, barefoot and in my pajamas. It was the perfect temperature outside, and the rainfall was neither too light nor too heavy. It was just too wonderful to resist. I spent at least an hour playing in the rain, though I was nearly grown. I wiggled my toes in the mud of my mother’s rose bed. I let my feet splash in the deep pools of water forming on the concrete. I embraced the smells of rainwater, dirt and wet grass. I walked up and down and around my yard, both front and back. I looked at the way the rain moved in the beam of light from the tall lamppost in front of my house, as I had done many times before from my living room window. This time, I wanted to see what it looked like from underneath. Overall, it was a very strange thing for someone who was halfway grown-up to do, but I never wanted to be like the others anyway.



Propeller seeds don’t work when they’re wet. Instead of a slow, spinning fall, they crash to the ground.



When I was fifteen, I was diagnosed with depression. It happened in early March, and the rain was a lot colder than it usually was. Even though it was a hard time in my life, getting a diagnosis and receiving treatment was a blessing. I don’t like to think about the things that caused my depression. Instead, I like to remember what happened when I experienced my first release from it.

It was late May, and it was raining again. I was walking towards the back door to my house. The rain was warm and comforting. For the first time in a very long time, I was at peace. I was finally getting better. Even though it seems like something that would happen in a movie, I couldn’t help but lift my face to the sky. I whispered “I’m free”. I felt it through every inch of my soul, the rain, washing away the pain that had lingered for so many years.



One of the first dates I had with Ray was when I showed him around my college campus. I had the day planned out perfectly. We would take a nice, long walk, starting at my dorms and winding through grass, trees, and beautiful towering buildings. Our walk would end just past the far end of campus, where we would sit down at a restaurant for burgers, fries and malts.

It rained. It was freezing and windy, and the rain came down in violent torrents. The umbrella Ray brought was barely big enough for both of us. We were hungry, though, so we somehow made our way to the far end of campus by the quickest route possible. The date went as smoothly as it could have under the circumstances.



When I was younger, I thought I would enjoy a life of excitement and rapid change. Moving to another state to go to college at a big, bustling university seemed like the perfect choice for me. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized how much comfort I had in my routines. A routine is something that can give a crazy life a structure, or a boring life a meaning. In the past I loved change, but now, I almost fear it.

One of my many routines is held on my ipod. Whenever I crossed the Washington Avenue Bridge over the Mississippi River, I very often listened to the song No Rain by Blind Melon. Even though the lyrics were simple, it somehow seemed to capture my own offbeat stream of consciousness perfectly. It fit best on sunny days, when the river sparkled and the breeze was warm.






I don’t notice the rain as much as I used to. I still don’t bring an umbrella with me, but I use roof overhangs a lot more often. My grandparents are both gone now, as is my dog. My mother’s kitchen floor is always sparkling. I can’t take the time to splash in puddles or toss handfuls of propeller seeds in the air. A twenty-year-old looks silly doing things like that. But if one watches carefully, they might spot a young woman who isn’t walking as fast as she should through a rain storm.