Here comes the rain again

I love to sit and watch the rain.  Sometimes the drops are big and fat.  Sometimes they come so fast you can’t really see them.  Sometimes rain spoils everything.  You can’t work outside.  You can’t take that long walk unless you want to get soaked.  Sometimes rain is exactly what you need.  You just planted grass seed and need to rain to make it grow.  You want a reason to have a day off to rest and relax and the rain is a perfect excuse for that.  Have you ever just stopped to really think about rain?  What it is, what it means?  Rain is never the same twice, no two drops are ever the same.  It makes art out of plain old dirt.  In the desert, you can smell it.  It almost seems like it has a life of it’s own.  Rain takes life as well as gives it, I know this is why it’s not always viewed as a good thing.  But there’s such beauty and grace as it dances from the sky.  Finally when the rain passes, everything is shiny, new.  The last few drops fall from the trees, heavy as they plop on the ground, reminding you that everything comes to an end at some point.  The birds come back out to greet the sun peeping around the clouds.  There are so many great songs about rain – how to listen to rain, what happens on a rainy night, how rain makes us feel.  You know the ones I mean.  Love stories often have a scene with a rain shower in it.  But how many of us really take the time to look at the rain?  To slow down and enjoy the beauty of a gentle shower as the earth gets a bath?  To notice things like the bubbles in a puddle after a raindrop hits?  To be a kid again and go out in it and spin around and around trying to catch the drops in our mouths?  Or to count the frogs in our yards during a storm?  So keep calm, carry on and take in a deep breath of the rain cooled air.   Sometimes these little pleasures are all we have to remind us how great and precious life truly is.