Sarah’s Slice of Life: The Rain Song

To some, rain means spending a quiet day indoors with a book and a cup of tea, but to me, it has always meant breaking the rules. I can trace my memories through rain, following the water all the way back to my childhood, where this connection between rain and rule-breaking began. There was nothing special about the first time I remember noticing the rain. It was a typical overcast day — all gray and dark, the air filled with the weight of coming clouds. 

However, something not typical soon followed. When the rain began to fall, streaking across the windows of our house, my dad helped my brother and me into our jackets and took us outside into the downpour. Armed with nothing but our jackets and rubber boots, we raced into the rain.

Up to that point, bad weather meant staying indoors to avoid catching colds, but that day, it meant breaking the rules. It meant running fast, feeling the drops of water wash against my cheeks. It meant watching the rain flow down the sides of curbs before splashing through all the puddles in the street. It meant being astounded with the way the water moved through the air, down the roads and across my palms.

That day in the rain became a formative memory because the rain made me feel free, like the world was a continuously beautiful place, and I had not even begun to discover its wonder. 

My fascination with the rain, however, didn’t last long after that day. It quickly cascaded into a fear of it. Where there was rain, thunderstorms could soon follow, and I was deathly afraid of storms. As I grew older, the memory of splashing in the puddles grew dimmer, and I would have been fine if I never ran in the rain again. 

However, I did experience another moment in the rain like the first one, and it felt just like breaking the rules again. This time, the rain came during one of my soccer games when I was in elementary school. 

In the middle of the game, the clouds broke free and washed us all with cold, biting water. I thought for sure the referees would cancel the game, but they let us play even as we tore up the muddy field with our cleats. 

Playing soccer in the rain felt just like it did when I first splashed in puddles. As I slipped and slid across the wet grass, streaking my legs with splatters of mud, I felt free again.

When the game ended, a thin mist began to hover over the fields, and the air smelled like wet earth and freshness. Even with my uniform and socks soaked through, I stopped to look at what the rain had left behind, and just like before, I remember thinking how beautiful everything was. 

That was the last time I remember playing in the rain. Now, it seems that rain can only be inconvenient or frustrating, that it only rains when I’m about to go on a run, bring groceries inside or wear sandals. 

As adults, there seems to be nothing exciting or freeing about splashing in puddles anymore. Doing so only gets your socks wet. 

Maybe we don’t have the time or desire anymore to be in the rain, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore the wonder rain brings to the world. When I think of rain now, I think of how it makes all the trees sparkle in the light, how it sounds when it hits my window during the night and how it trickles down roads and in creeks. 

Most of all, I think of how it freshens the earth, stirring up the smells of old wood and leaves, glittering the world and helping it find its growth again.

Poet Langston Hughes even likens rain to a song in his poem “April Rain Song,” noticing how it “makes still pools on the sidewalk” and “makes running pools in the gutter.” 

For Hughes, rain is a beautiful part of his ordinary world, and he tells others to appreciate it as well because it’s a song that everyone can sing along to.

“Let the rain kiss you,” Hughes writes. “Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops / Let the rain sing you a lullaby …The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night / and I love the rain.”

Tate is the Editor-in-Chief for the Liberty Champion. Follow her on Twitter