Rain is pending, or it’s already arrived. The mosquito screens make it hard to see if something’s really coming down or not. I got a few splotches on my car’s windshield on the way to and from the grocery store for lunch today. It’s been a while since I’ve played in the rain, splashed through puddles and the like… I used to have so much fun running through the grassy backyard at Euclid road on a rainy day. Well, before my mom lassoed me and dragged me inside, that is. But then she would wrap a towel around me and I could sit and listen to the din resounding off the skylight in the kitchen, bare feet in puddles on the linoleum floor.
I cried when I was eleven. I cried because I could sense my carefree days coming to an end. I had more responsibility at school and at home, and although I only pinpointed the source of the feelings later while talking with my parents, I could feel my obligations encroaching on my whims… The sensations so immediate to that environment, or any in which we lived, didn’t disappear from my consciousness, though, and they never really have. It’s just a simple matter of slowing down and taking stock… I remember walking gingerly across the prickly gumballs on the dirt path leading to the neighbor’s house, collapsing in the yellow, sun-parched grass in Mrs. Donnelly’s front yard next door, and the sound the plexiglass roof on the tree house made when I hit my head against it. It’s no wonder I love smells above all as a source of memory, since if I caught a whiff of something resembling the smell of the freshly painted green shelves in my bedroom, everything would come tumbling back, immediate. Maybe I cried because I thought these things would disappear? No, it was a selfish thing, a simple matter of being able to dictate my own schedule, which meant having no set agenda at all, in fact. But the change is what I want to remember, the turning point. Taking note of those gives me a clearer bead on why I respond to things in ways that confuse me sometimes, and illuminates the path ahead ever so slightly.