Afraid of the storm

As I drove home during rush hour yesterday evening, I remembered our Minister Emeritus’ favorite Bible passage: “Be not afraid.”

The problem was that I was afraid, a little. Dark pewter clouds hung overhead and there was an ominous stillness in the air. Though no rain was falling yet, every few minutes a line of white-yellow lightning made a vertical streak through the clouds. All afternoon, my office window had offered a tableau of blue sky and sunshine, but I had already received word that there were thunderstorms at home, 20 miles away, and I sensed as I merged onto the highway that I was driving straight toward them.

But then I remembered our minister saying that his favorite phrase from the Bible was that ever-so-simple one of just three words, that remarkably unadorned command: Be not afraid.

Driving on a highway in a thunderstorm should not be a scary experience, I reasoned with myself. This is rain, not snow: ice is not going to be a problem. On this wide interstate, there’s no threat of trees falling. And even if I don’t have as firm a grasp on the physics of electricity as I should, I do know that cars offer fairly reliable protection from lightning.

So as the clouds opened up and buckets of rain started falling into the roadway, I repeated it to myself again: Be not afraid. Yes, there’s something intuitively unnerving about so much noise and so many bright flashes. And yes, the sheets of water pouring down from the sky do decrease visibility a little bit. But it was broad daylight and everyone seemed to be driving carefully. I knew my fear was just general instinct and not common sense.

Being afraid is almost never productive, I reminded myself. Its opposite, being brave, can however be very useful. And its corollary, being cautious, is often a positive thing as well. But straight-out fear? Over being in a car on a wide straight highway when it’s raining? Not useful at all.

So I tried to focus on other aspects of the storm besides its improbable dangers. The color of the lightning against the gray sky was beautiful. The rain would help my newly planted herbs grow, as well as everything else that had recently been planted in gardens and farms all around me. And the slower traffic might actually make my commute safer than it was on an ordinary June evening.

It rained hard for a while, and then the storm lessened. I thought of one of my grandmother’s many peculiar turns of phrase about weather: “It has to get it out of its system.” Not withstanding the linguistic awkwardness of the repeated “its” in that sentence, we were always a little bit amused by her arbitrary interpretation of meteorology, but the thought that the rain would purge itself was indeed comforting. Maybe this means it will be clear for Tim’s class beach party on Wednesday, I reasoned, and even better, for his graduation next Monday.

Maybe. Or maybe not. But it was true that I didn’t have much to fear in this particular storm. Be not afraid: a message that once again reminded me of the uselessness of fear. Next time I’m driving in a storm, maybe I’ll be slower to let anxiety take over. I was safely home an hour later. My herb garden was flourishing in the fresh rainfall. And everything was fine.

End of vacation week

It seemed fitting yesterday, the final day of school vacation week, to wake up to a gray drizzle.

It also seemed fortunate, given the spring drought we’ve been enduring for the past several weeks. A spring drought isn’t like a summer drought – the ground doesn’t appear to be parched, and the mild weather has coaxed pale green leaves and tiny buds from tree branches even without precipitation – but our town as well as many around us have put open burning season on hiatus due to the lack of recent rainfall, and even closer to home, with the barn nearly empty of hay, we need rain so that the grass grows faster and the cows can graze.

But from the perspective of it being the end of April vacation week, the drizzle came as a reasonable trade-off for the almost impossibly beautiful weather we’d had since school was dismissed on Friday the 13th. Warm, sunny days prevailed all week; it was a wonderful vacation not to be going far, because there was plenty about New England to enjoy over these past ten days. The kids indulged me with walks in the woods; I indulged them with a bike ride to our local ice cream stand. When another family came over for dinner last weekend, the four kids together set up the badminton net, and we played badminton throughout the week. On Saturday, Holly and I took the dog down to the brook in the woods behind our house to see if we could coax her to swim. We couldn’t, but it was an enjoyable walk anyway.

So a rainy Sunday seemed reasonable and fitting, transitioning us mentally back into school-week mode. I ran some laundry while Rick did deskwork, and I insisted that the kids clean out their school backpacks, a job that should have been done when they came home from school ten days ago but went neglected in favor of time outdoors. I vacuumed the baseboards and corners of every room and changed the beds. I took a long, objective look at all the writing assignments that I’d postponed throughout the past week in favor of a three-day trip to Maine and time in the boat.

Today the kids go back to school and the adults refocus on work. Yesterday’s somber weather forewarned us that this change was coming, but we didn’t mind. With ten beautiful, fun-filled, sunny vacation days preceding it, the rain just reminded us that summer isn’t here yet and there’s still work to be done. In another eight weeks, another vacation begins. For now, it’s time for work and school and the growing season that yesterday’s rain presumably encouraged. It was a great vacation week. We’re refreshed, renewed, and ready.

Just do it

I set my alarm Sunday morning for 6:30. Early for a weekend day, but on the Sundays that I’m not only going to church but also teaching Sunday school and need to be there early to prepare, that’s what time I need to get up if I want to fit in a four-mile run.

And I did want to fit in a four-mile run. At least I did when I got ready for bed on Saturday night. Four miles sounded just great. It would take me about 45 minutes, counting actual pack-up-and-get-out-the-door time (iPod connected, cell phone in waistpack, shoes tied, hat located, dog pacified since she doesn’t get to run with me on weekends), so as long as I was on the road by 7, it would work out well.

But I woke yesterday morning about 6:25 and listened to the rain on the roof and noticed how chilly the bedroom was and looked at the gray sky through the skylight and felt very different from how I felt on Saturday night. No longer did I want to go for a four-mile run at all. Nor a three-mile or two-mile run, or any run at all.

Just get up and go, I told myself. Just go ahead with the plan.

How about after church? the other voice in my head countered. When I’m awake, and there’s a little more daylight on the road.

The weather won’t be better after church, my conscience replied. Plus it’s an extra change of clothes if you go in the middle of the day. Get up and go.

But I’m drowsy and chilly and don’t want to go running.

Then just do a mile. Just get out there for a mile, and once you’ve done that, if you want to, you can do more, and if you don’t want to, you can stop.

This, as I so often say, is the number one reason to commit to a running streak. Being a streak-runner means never having to decide whether or not it’s a good day to go running.

No, there was no question I’d go running before the day ended, but does it have to be so early? the voice in my head went on. I’m up at 5:20 five days a week. Can’t I sleep late on weekends?

But of course, I knew from plenty of past experience how that would go. If I waited to go running, I’d needlessly waste stores of mental energy throughout the morning thinking about how my run still lay ahead. I’d get home from church and not feel like changing into my running clothes. It would be late afternoon and I’d still be dreading the thought of a run on a cold gray afternoon.

Or I could just roll out of bed and go, before I was fully conscious of what kind of day it was.

Just a mile, I reminded myself. If it’s not going well, you can stop.

But any runner knows how that goes, and why it’s such a good trick to use on yourself. As I used to tell Tim, after five minutes in the rain, you’re as wet as you’re going to get; might as well just keep going.

Besides, after five minutes of running, you remember why you run. Lying in a warm soft bed, it’s hard to re-create the feeling of breathing in fresh cool air, the rhythm of your feet against the roadway, the breeze, the smell of wet leaves. All you can remember while you’re lying in bed is why you don’t want to get up yet.

So I got up anyway, put on my running clothes, drank some water, headed out the door.

And as always, half a mile in, I wasn’t thinking about turning back. I was thinking about the next three and a half miles and how good it would feel to just keep running.

Roll out of bed. It’s a lesson I seem to learn over and over again. Rolling out of bed is often the hardest part of the run. And after that, it really truly is downhill all the way.

Rainy August day

Rain poured down for much of the day yesterday and throughout the evening, but I didn't mind a bit. I did feel bad for people who were taking the week as vacation, camping or hiking or biking or at the beach; and I'm sorry for kids at camp this week as well. But for me, the rain felt just fine.

For one thing, it meant one less thing on my To Do list: no worry about watering my outdoor flowering plants and herbs yesterday or today or probably for several days to come. It made for a soggy run, but one thing that being a daily runner has taught me is that the rain, like a lot of sometimes-undesirable entities, often sounds worse than it is. What seems like a downpour thumping against the roof and windows and trees often feels more like a steady sprinkle once I'm out in it, as long as I remember to wear a hat with a visor. And, as I always say, after the first five minutes you're as wet as you're going to get, and then after that it doesn't really matter anymore if it's raining.

Besides, rain almost seemed to complement the activities we had planned for the day. It was Holly's first day of a weeklong daycamp program, but unlike all the kids off at soccer camp or Girl Scout camp, rain was no deterrent to her group's activities: it's a creative writing camp. For most of it they sat in a pillowed reading nook to write, but at one point they sat under a canopy outdoors and wrote about the sounds and smells of the rain falling all around them.

Like Holly, I spent the morning writing – though I was actually reporting on a sculpture symposium taking place in a nearby town this week, not crafting metaphors and similes about the weather as Holly was – and then together she and I took the dog to the vet for a vaccination and then did some errands. Hopping in and out of the car and crossing the parking lot, first at the post office and then at the library and then on to the supermarket, we were windblown and drenched, but neither of us complained. Knowing how much Rick was hoping I'd pick up some Diet Coke for him, I even made a special stop just for that. By that point, it was an extension of the lesson I always apply to running: I was too soaked for it to really matter if I made yet another stop. Home in the late afternoon, I changed clothes and spent the next two hours cooking: my sister and her family, along with my mother, were coming over for dinner, and rather than a burden, it seemed like fun to prepare food and set the table.

I wish we could send some of this rain to Texas and other drought-stricken regions. I know my nattering about not minding getting wet while doing errands is meaningless compared to the suffering that rain – or lack of rain – causes so me people. But I also like to stop and acknowledge the rightness of the weather, when it so perfectly matches my mood as it did yesterday. There's still time for more hot, sunny weather before the summer ends, and more outdoor recreation as well. For now, I'm happy with rain.

Warm summer rain

There’s always something new for me to appreciate about running. I’ve been running regularly for the past 25 years and daily for the past four years, but days like yesterday still come along when I find myself out on a run thinking, “I’ve never noticed how much I like _________ .”

In yesterday’s case, filling in the blank was “…running in a light steady rain on a warm, humid summer day.” In fact, I can’t remember a single previous time when I’ve found it really pleasing to run in the rain. Sometimes I do so grudgingly, sometimes acceptingly, sometimes miserably – I often quote Runner’s World executive editor Amby Burfoot, who in one of his books says “There is no bad weather for running. Okay, maybe 34 degrees and raining is bad weather for running.” And it seems that throughout the winter, I frequently find myself running in 34 degrees and rain. Sometimes, too, I run in the rain fearfully, as I did two weeks ago, with thunderstorms rolling in from a distance.

But until yesterday, I had no memories of not just abiding the rain but really loving the rain. Yesterday, the rain felt nourishing, cooling, soothing. The air was so warm and humid; the rain, only slightly cooler, seemed to balance out the heat. I ran four miles, a straight out-and-back down to the end of the main street off of which we live and back. When my face started to feel hot and sweaty, I ran my hands against the leaves that poked their way into the roadway and cooled off in the water; normally I try to avoid wet leaves. Normally I try to avoid puddles, too, but yesterday there was a puddle extending the width of our driveway that I simply couldn’t avoid, so with my feet wet from the outset, there was no reason to try to avoid further puddles, and I enjoyed the mindlessness of just running straight through the puddles rather than trying to navigate around them.

I have to admit that my newfound enjoyment of the rain wasn’t solely a change of mindset, not just a Zen-like decision to welcome the rain rather than resist it. Part of the change was pragmatic: until last summer, when the importance of sun protection finally sunk in, I was never in the habit of running with a hat on. Having the rainwater run off my visor rather than into my eyes made it a lot easier not to mind the steady stream of droplets.

But mostly, it was just that rain felt right, yesterday. The weather has been hot lately, and I’ve been running early in the day, when there are a lot of insects out. In the rain, the insects were gone. I felt as if I were blissfully undisturbed: just me, running through the gentlest of showers, cooling off, damp with fresh clean water rather than damp with sticky sweat.

By the end of my four miles, my clothes were drenched, but I still wasn’t cold. It was a perfect day to be running in the rain, and I felt as if I’d discovered a whole new pleasure in running. It might be a long time before the conditions – air temperature, intensity of rainfall, even my own mindset – conflate into the perfect rainy-day run again. But for yesterday, it was exactly right, and I felt as if I’d made a discovery. About myself, about the weather, about running.

Running in the rain

Yesterday morning when my alarm went off at 5:30, I could hear a light patter of rain. Nearly three hours later, by the time I was ready to take Holly out to the bus and then start my run, it was a steady downpour.

As I used to tell Tim when he ran with me, running in the rain is tough only for the first five minutes. After that, you’re as wet as you’re going to get; it’s not going to become any worse. You just have to steel yourself for those first five minutes.

So yesterday, that’s what I did: steeled myself for the first five minutes of steady rain. And I discovered once again what I always discover when I urge myself out to run in a rainfall: it’s not that bad. The rain cools your skin as you run, and there’s no sun glare to contend with in your eyes. If you get hot, you can sluice rainwater off a low-hanging branch and pat it on your forehead and cheeks. Dodging puddles gives you practice at agility. In my case, where the dog likes to stop every twenty seconds or so to shake off the water, it gives me practice in quick stops as well; if I don’t put the brakes on myself and run in place while she shakes to her satisfaction, I trip over her.

The best part of running in the rain is finishing the run: entering a warm, dry house, knowing you didn’t let the rain put you off. You feel chilled in damp clothes, but warm inside, knowing you met the weather head-on and fit in a good workout.

True, that’s a little like the joke about “Why are you hitting yourself?” “Because it feels so good when I stop,” which my 12-year-old is at just the right age to find hilarious. Why run in the rain? Because it feels so good when you’re done. But in all honesty, that’s part of the appeal of running whether it’s raining or not: the sense of satisfaction and of conquering that comes when the run is finished. Whether or not it’s raining, running means slaying a certain kind of dragon every time you go out: the dragon of inertia. Running may be natural, but staying put is natural too, and preserving energy even more so. To head out on a run at any time is to say that you are willing yourself to overcome the urge to stay at rest. To head out on a run in the rain is to overcome a natural aversion to discomfort, wetness, chill.

Trivial as those dragons may be, it feels good to stare them down, overcome them, leave them in your wake. There are a lot of inner struggles I can’t conquer as easily as the wish to stay indoors when it’s running. Pushing myself out the door for a couple of miles in the rain makes me feel like I’ve overcome one tiny hurdle in my day. And having done that, maybe I can take on some bigger hurdles before the day, or the rain, ends.

Another rainy day yesterday -- but no one except for me minded

Yes, I was exultant when the rain began falling on Sunday morning for the first time in over a month. The ground was parched, the grass had stopped growing, the cows were eating weeds of questionable origin, and I had to fill the water trough every day because the brook had run dry.

Then it rained for three more days, and I was still happy about it, because the drought had been such a source of worry for me over the past few weeks, and I knew it would take a few consecutive days of rain to really change the amount of groundwater and reverse the drought.

So I couldn’t help feeling a little guilty yesterday morning when I woke to still more rain and had a twinge of wishing that we could have a day without rain, just for recreational purposes. But I suppressed the thought. Still, by midmorning I felt a little like the Cat in the Hat, trying to pull fun and merriment out of thin air as the kids and I spent yet another day at home watching the rain fall.

But once I stepped back mentally to take an objective look at the scene, I realized I was reading it all wrong. Yes, I wanted to get outside with the kids; I wanted to go for a bike ride or take a walk or even just sit outdoors eating ice cream, but they were having a fine time with our rainy day program. Holly’s friend Caroline had come over to play, and the girls played Wii games for a little while and then immersed themselves – and also immersed half the kitchen – in an art project involving construction paper, glue, and colored sand. After lunch, they finished their sand paintings and I made a batch of chocolate cupcakes. The girls came up with the idea of designing “order forms” listing various options for the cupcakes that they could then check off according to their preferences: almonds, coconut, frosting, birthday candles.

And that was when I realized that to them, it wasn’t a tedious day of indoor boredom; it was a really great playdate. From this day, they would remember the sand painting, the cupcakes, the order forms; not the rain or the feeling of being cooped up indoors. When you’re eight, you live so much more in the moment, which in part means not regretting that you can’t fit in yet another late-summer bike ride but instead just having a terrific time with a friend.

Why I’m so sure of this is that I can still remember feeling that way myself, and coincidentally enough, earlier this week I received an e-mail from the mother of one of my own childhood friends with whom I’d fallen out of touch many years ago. Corresponding with my friend’s mother reminded me of what a wonderful time I used to have at their house. I remember making confections out of powdered sugar, milk and peanut butter; playing Master Mind; letting their guinea pigs toddle around on blankets on the floor. We used a tape recorder – at that time the apex of home technology -- to produce imaginary radio commercials that we found side-splitting. I remember the inexplicable bliss of a sleepover there and how remarkably happy I was just to get to be part of their household for twenty-four hours. But I doubt my friend’s mom had the same fabulous memories of those particular days or nights. She might have been preoccupied with work or health concerns, or maybe she was happy as well but for other reasons. But I don’t necessarily think she was looking at us and sensing that we were having the time of our lives.

So it was reassuring to remind myself how little the kids cared about the weather. They had fun; that’s all they were focusing on. It was a good reminder to me to forget about the sink full of dishes and the growing accumulation of clutter at the bottom of the stairs and just enjoy another rainy day. Sunshine is predicted for today; we’ll have the chance to do something else. The girls had fun playing together yesterday. Rain and all.

Into every life, some rain must fall (and soon, we hope)

When I went outside last night just before bedtime to look at the sky, I could see flashes of lightning just beyond the tree line. I could hear muted thunder and a gentle patter of rain.

“Please rain harder,” I thought as I looked at the sky. “And please rain for a lot of hours.”

The contiguous weeks of unusually hot weather we’ve had this summer are causing the ground to dry out. The grass around us is turning yellow and even brown. Since we live on a farm, the problem of drought is meaningful on more than just an intellectual level to us. If rain doesn’t fall in significant amounts soon, the cows will run out of sufficient grazing land and we’ll have to start feeding them hay. Most years – every year I can remember of the ten we’ve lived here on my parents' farm, in fact – the cows have eaten nothing but freshly growing grass from late May through October; we feed bales out of the barn throughout the winter and early to mid-spring. Resorting to hay feedings this summer means running the risk of running short on hay stores by winter.

So despite the increasing commotion of thunder and lightning as the storm moved closer last night, it was the soft patter of rain that caught my attention. I didn’t want to hear a soft patter; I wanted to hear a downpour. I wanted to picture the dark fields becoming soaked through.

The words “Into every life some rain must fall” floated through my mind as I stood on the front porch, but then I remembered that those words are typically invoked as a negative statement, or a consolation; the rain is a metaphor for undesirable circumstances. Saying it last night felt more like I was trying to convince myself: Rain will fall soon; it always does around here. At that moment the expression seemed so misguided. Why should the metaphor of rain falling into every life be used as a negative image? The ground needs some rain. The trees, the grass, the pond life, the forest animals: every living thing around us could benefit from some rain right now.

Imagining the steady rainfall I wished to hear drenching the pastures, causing new green grass to rise up which in turn would nourish the grazing animals, I started thinking about other forces in our lives that have this positive effect of rain, presences that fall into our lives to nourish and strengthen and help us to grow. Into every life some rain must fall. Seen in that positive context, there are so many ways in which rain falls into our lives. I thought about the presence of friends by phone or email or in person when I’m feeling isolated. The encouraging phone calls from my agent over the past couple of weeks, assuring me that my work-in-progress would live and thrive. Unexpected work opportunities falling on my desk recently to end a dry period of not drawing in new clients. The surgeon with whom family members just met who reassured them that he had plenty of experience and reason for optimism regarding problems like the one about which they consulted him. Even the kids’ report cards last month were like nourishing rain, soothing the anxiety I sometimes feel about their school performance.

Into every life some rain must fall. Let’s hope so: our very existence depends upon it. Let’s hope plenty of rain falls soon to feed our pastures and our animals, and let’s be grateful for the rain that falls regularly on our spirits. Not the kind of rain that ruins a picnic or a ballgame: the kind of rain that does what rain is really intended for: cooling, soothing, hydrating, life-giving rain.

Playing after the flood

Yesterday’s Boston Globe carried an engaging op-ed piece by Julianna Baggott, a college writing instructor who suspects her late-teen students have little experience with spontaneous, non-electronic, outdoor play, having grown up amidst organized sports and video games. Knowing the Globe’s lead time, I suspect it’s just a coincidence that the essay ran on what felt to us like, if not the first day of spring, then at least the first day of potential spring. And my kids, though no strangers to video games, did in fact play spontaneously outside.

The weather had a lot of meaning for us yesterday. We arose in the pre-dawn darkness as usual, and because the past three days have been dominated by dark gray skies, steady rain and the most massive flooding in this area that I’ve seen in four decades, I imagined that another gray and rainy day lurked under the cover of pre-dawn darkness.

But I was wrong. When light filled the sky, it wasn’t the dull gray light of the past three days; it was sunlight. Thin, white clouds scudded across a pale blue sky. The rain was over. And while the remnants of the storm were still somewhat jaw-dropping to behold – our barnyard and west pastures still under water, a whitewater deluge rushing across our driveway in the two spots where it crosses the brook, and all over town orange safety cones and detour signs scattered amidst the roadways – the sunshine promised that we’d have at least this one day without more rain.

The kids felt the sun not only on their faces but in their bones. After school, Holly rolled out her two-wheeler for only the second time this season and asked if she could pedal it around. I pulled a lawn chair out onto the front step so that I could keep an eye on her. She fetched three favorite stuffed animals and had them take turns riding on her bike with her. The dog lay next to me on the sunny stoop. Tim and his friend Will invented a game of nerf baseball, smacking a soft round orb around with a padded bat, yelling, chasing each other, occasionally tackling. For once, they didn’t even ask to play computer games or video games. They knew they needed fresh air and sun.

The cows and sheep bravely crossed the flooded pasture to make their way to a dry hillside, and the floodwaters started receding. The kids admitted it was kind of exciting to have to trek along a trail through the woods to get to our car, which we’d moved to a cul-de-sac that backs onto our property just before the driveway became impassable.

So Julianna Baggott writing in the Globe is right; kids don’t play spontaneously outdoors the way they did in past generations. But once in a while, when the mood and the weather are right, a more primal instinct takes over and they give up all their usual distractions to bike or run and just be outside. My kids were like that today on what felt like the kickoff to spring, and it made me hope we have a lot more afternoons like that in the oncoming season, and that we still appreciate the warmth of the spring sun even when the floodwaters are just photos.