It's interesting how rain affects me. In the winter, on those rare occasions that it's actually warm enough to rain, a day of clouds and drizzle makes me long to curl up in bed and shut out the world, and if I had things to do, so what? They'll get done eventually. Winter rain is an excuse for sleep almost as much as snowstorms are - but really any excuse will do in winter, which, it seems to be forgotten, used to be a time of slow unhurried rest.
In spring, rain no longer seems so dreary; instead, it makes everything feel finally clean as all the detritus of winter washes away. Strangely enough, the whole feel of a rainstorm changes with the change of seasons, no matter how much rain comes down in what amount of time. Every sharp edge feels softer, and it puts me in a contemplative mood (thus this post). This is the season in which rainstorms drive me to a cozy book-and-blanket nest instead of hibernation. Something about the sound of rain in spring makes every story more real somehow. Perhaps it's because the stories of the slowly waking world are coming back to life.
When summer comes, with its thunderstorms and loud atonal raindrops and the petrichor smell of dust and parched plants rejoicing, my first urge is to stand and watch and feel the power of the storm in my bones . . . until I've had enough, at which time I'm grateful for a house to retreat to and a solid roof over my head. Summer rainstorms compel me to listen, to pay attention to the power and fury that nature can command; it can hardly be ignored, when thunder resounds like Titans clashing in the mountains that loom above my home.
Autumn rains are bleak and colorless, washing away the last remnants of a seasonal splendor, bleaching everything brown in preparation for the winter's thick, silent shrouds of white. Again this is a season for stories, but for endings, not beginnings, for quietly letting go, for putting things to rest, assured that when spring comes once more, the soft implacability of rain will come again, in yet another way and meaning.
