Torrential Autumn Equinox

My window is open, only a little bit. The smell of rain; the cool, damp air; the sound of water; the darkness outside— they’re all here now, for a long time. Outside my window is blackness, the reflection of my indoor light. If I look out there I can see the outline of my neighbor’s giant maple. Only one and a half weeks ago I had stared out my sunny window, worrying for its leaves, which were partially crisped by the sun. Only a week ago, we couldn’t go outside because the air quality was hazardous.

Perpetual change. It’s the one truly dependable constant.

I’ve started a new nanny job which means less time for everything else. Yesterday I went to a farm with the boys and their mother. We picked green beans and pickling cucumbers and I gently snapped squash blossoms from their stems and piled them in my hands. Geese called to each other. The clouds above us touched edges, separated to reveal the sun, then gathered again; indigo, cornflower, gray. Their edges stretched like pulled cotton and, as we walked through an endless field of corn, began to bleed rain. It had been torrenting on the drive up. The boys, in their rain pants, reached their arms out to hold the leaves of the corn stalks at bay. We emerged a ways from the vegetable stand. I went to retrieve the wagon we’d abandoned as the rain asserted itself.

This is where I grew up, in rain. Rain on my way to whichever school I walked to, pattering on my umbrella or soaking the exposed parts of my stretch pants. Rain in puddles and streams and rivulets and ribbons, its water always searching for the path of least resistance. Rain caught in trash and tree sheddings like little river dams. Rain falling in miniature waterfalls through storm grates. Car tires driving over the water, the sound like an ocean wave; a hundred ocean waves.

I was scared of this. The water and the darkness. The familiarity and connection to my child self, when my childhood was dangerous and lonely. I didn’t want to remember her, to have the rain as a reminder, the low clouds holding everything in. The sense of isolation and, sometimes, terror.

The rain feels different now. Is it that I’ve become accustomed to solitude? A suit that once felt chafing and stifling, now worn in, its insides soft like fur, warm like down, its outsides infinitely textured? The sound of rain is imbued with tender warmth. The wind outside is rustling the leaves of the giant maple. They’ll all flutter to the ground soon, and it will be winter. Sometimes winter means snow, but here it means more rain. I need to waterproof my coat, buy taller rain boots; a sturdy umbrella. The rain, pattering, accompanies me.