venice rain

it’s raining Venice right now. great, steady drops that accumulate in the middle of roads and turn into oceans with their own swells, wake pushed off cars crawling slowly through. the rain finds its way through a hole in the ceiling, just above the toilet, now a pedestal for a small plastic refuse container. the sky is a uniform grey, not the boiling rage of this week’s fleeting storms; this one has settled in, hung (or is it hanged? scott?) its hat, and made itself welcome.

i remember this rain from my childhood, and it has been a long time since i’ve heard those tiny percussionists drumming my roof. back then, though, the lanai was bathed in faint green light and the din came from the corrugated plastic roof. i used to tiptoe from one rough, stucco tile across the inch-wide canyon to the next, traversing the path from house to pool and back again. watching dark brown lizards cling to the undulating screens, surfing the wind. if we had it in time, we would pull the yellow shades that neatly compacted themselves into a tropical cylinder atop the screens when retracted, that blowed wildly when unfurled. i can still see the galaxies of rain-dimples on the surface of the canal just beyond the swell of citrus trees in our backyard, and the cities of anthills that made a barefoot trek harrowing. and dandy, our sweet tempered, fluffy sheltie, sitting in the middle of this interloping universe by my side.

today is a different world; it brings me a mix of peace and sadness to think of rainy florida evenings 10 years ago. that there is reconciliation between who i was sitting there, a decade ago, with who i am sitting here, presently, is the source of the peace. that i never understood how ephemeral that beauty was while i was in it, and took it for granted, brings me the sadness borne of childhood folly.