Waiting up for the rain

image from pintrest

A few nights ago, the sound of rain lured me out of bed and into the kitchen.

I drank a glass of water slowly, over the sink, before deciding to stay up just a little later than usual.

I opened the sliding doors of the balcony and lay back on the couch with a light blanket over my body. That night, it was the most perfect, gentle sort of rain that fell. Without wind, without urgency, just a subtle shhhhh h h h trickling through the trees and onto the ground.

I was smiling.

It almost worried me, how perfect it felt.

I don’t know how long I laid there, just listening, but at some point I fell asleep, woke up, closed the doors, and stumbled back to bed.

I think about that moment, and feel warm.

How simple it can be.

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Like most people I know, I’ve never been great at boundaries.

When I taught yoga in studios, I had one lone boundary. That single boundary took me more than two years to establish and was challenged, over and over and over again, but somehow, I was able to stick to it, wrap my arms around it like some ancient tree and save it from being felled.

This boundary caused me conflict and grief, taught me how to stand up for myself, and brought me an indescribable amount of peace.

My boundary was this: before 10am, I do not teach.

And so, since then, my mornings took on a quality of sacredness boarding on the extreme.

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One of my favourite things in the world is waking up to the sound of rain.

That love is challenged, of course, in times of La Nina and floods and when it has been days or weeks with the skin not receiving even a lick of sun, but when a rainy morning appears for the first time in a little while, nothing brings me more joy, nothing else catapults me out of bed so fast.

My first instinct is to fling every window open as wide as possible, to slide the balcony doors back as far as they’ll go. When it rains non stop for days on end, the most annoying part, aside from not seeing the sun, or having to put on the oldest shoes I can find to walk along a muddied path, is that the windows should remain shut, as to not fill the house with damp and mould.

Nothing makes me feel more restricted than a rainy day with all the windows closed.

I first noticed my love and longing for rain when I moved into a modern apartment building at 29.

For ten years prior, I had lived in old blocks of units, and the occasional house. The kind of places that weren’t scary or disgusting in their dilapidation, but run down enough to make you wonder how something so valuable could be treated with such little care.

I’m (clearly) not a rental property owner, but something about owning a place of residence, and allowing it to teeter on the edge of just being liveable, simply to extract as much money out of it as possible makes me feel a little bit sick, and incredibly sad.

Anyway.

The modern apartment was small, but the building was only three years old. It had a spacious lift and all the taps and fixtures were rose gold. In almost every way I loved that apartment: Nothing was broken. Everything worked. When you cleaned, it actually felt clean. There was a massive tree outside the second bedroom window, one that was a blaze of the brightest green in summer and reduced to a twig by late June. That space became my own tiny office and studio. One spring, a bird made her nest just outside my window, singing through many of my readings and zoom calls. I’ve never minded living in small spaces, I prefer them, even, as long as I can fit my books and coffee equipment, my yoga props and glass jars of dried herbs.

The thing about that apartment was: I couldn’t hear the sound of the rain, at all. Even if I opened the tiny balcony door as much as I could, it was like the solid, rounded edges of the building absorbed it all. It took me a few months to pinpoint what felt ever so slightly off about this wonderful space I was making my home. When I realised, I felt my stomach drop. What a small and stupid thing to be upset about, I thought. How ungrateful can you be, I would mentally repeat. But slowly, over time, it weighed on me, like an extra layer of clothing you can’t be bothered to take off.

〰️

In 2013, I visited Japan in mid June. The rainy season had begun, and as far as the eye could see, people carried clear plastic umbrellas, always ready for that first drop. A friend and I stayed at an airbnb in Shimokitazawa, a small suburb in Tokyo on the Inokashira line, a suburb that used to be both adorable and grungy, with secondhand clothing stores and tiny cafes and stores selling rice crackers all squished together like crooked teeth, a suburb now, holding only a few remaining threads of what it felt and looked like before.

On that trip, it rained a lot, and everything felt alive. I still remember the bright, wet flowers and leaves stark against the sodden concrete. I still remember walking through the park at Mitaka, toward the Ghibli museum, feeling enchanted beneath the shelter of a clear umbrella, enjoying the sound the rain made when it hit the plastic. I loved the thick, humid air, breathing it in, feeling it against my skin. No wonder, I thought, there’s the potential for so much magic here.

Our airbnb was simple. Every night we rolled out the futon and slept messily on the floor. I would wake up earlier than my friend, sit on the tiny balcony and eat breakfast made with that pillowy soft bread and coffee from a bag called Blendy. I was writing a lot of poetry then, and something about those mornings was so pure. I had travelled to my favourite place in the world, and the best part of the day was sitting on the balcony in the rain, writing poetry, drinking coffee, watching people walk by with their umbrellas, half bowing at the yellow and green taxis creeping past in the tiny streets, but mostly, doing nothing at all.

In a world of GRWM and morning routines and how to get ahead while your competition sleeps, nothing feels more alive to me than drawing a big golden circle around my morning and declaring it my own, to do both everything and nothing at all. It feels more precious, as I get older, as I listen to the stories of friends with children who can’t remember what it felt like to have time of their own. I know one day, maybe, this golden circle will be so small, I’ll hardly be able to see it at all. I try to let that thought warm me, instead of worry me. I know the pressure of trying to make the most of something often leads to feeling nothing at all.

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This morning, I woke up while the beginnings of the sun stained the sky, pink and red between the apartments and the trees just off to my right. I fed the cat, made oolong tea, opened cold enough for snow by Jessica Au, wriggled into the couch and started to read. One of the greatest pleasures in this world.

As the sun lifted and tea long gone, I stood on the balcony and took in the rays. Later, I walked through the tiny forest by my home, blessed by the little drops of light passing through the leaves.

Enjoying every moment of the warm and the light and the cicadas whirring, I arrived home and checked the weather app on my phone. I smiled at the presence of droplet laden clouds coming, warm in the knowing.

I can enjoy the sun fully, with rain on the way.

From The Deep Rest Salon Substack, 2023.