Do you know the rest of this nursery rhyme? “…the old man is snoring…”
Rain takes me back to my childhood. I hear old nursery rhymes. I take a long deep breath through my nose and fill my lungs with its scent. First drops of rain on the dusty earth is a such a sensory experience. I travel back in time to the farm of my childhood when the smell of first rain heralds the much awaited watering of a crop.
As a child lots of rain usually meant slippery roads and flooded creeks. My very first day in school was during floods and away from home. The weekend before school started I boarded the amphibious Army ‘duck’ for the township;and school on the other side. I crossed the flooded river to stay with a local church family who would take my nearly five year old self to her first day of school. Floods came the next year too but this time my mum and a new neighbour were ahead of it and rented a house in town so we kids could get to school.
Another memory is heading home from the local picture theatre to our farm house one dark night. Our family station wagon slid all over the black mud that replaced the dusty road. With no seatbelts in the vehicle my siblings and I had to hold on where we could, while Dad’s strong hands gripped the steering wheel extra hard. He managed to keep the car away from the edge of the road . He avoided getting the car bogged and manoeuvred the sedan through and around the ruts and the potholes that had multiplied.
It has been raining here this past week. The rain is very welcome after a painfully long, hot and dry summer in Central Queensland. I sort of wish it would go away. We have had a week of rain now and our tank is full, the dam too and the back yard, the gullies, the creeks and the rivers are flowing. The grass once brown is now green again and more has emerged from the hungry ground that soaked up the water. Too much rain and our roads start getting cut off and our highways fill with potholes.
One weekend we were sitting on the back deck of our home with good friends when it started to rain. A local festival was underway. We had just finished dinner and were planning to head out for the evening. I sighed and announced it looked like we weren’t going out that night. Our friend, a European girl by birth, was so surprised. “Why?” she said, “if we had that attitude in my country we would never go out! Let’s just dress for rain.” Well that there presents another dilemma. I do not own wet weather gear. A pair of rubber thongs (not the underwear type) is the closest I own to waterproof wear. We spent the evening in.
Rain for me now is snuggling weather; reading a good book and listening to the rain fall on the ‘tin’ roof. And maybe even a little snoring. It is not weather for going outside. I have yet to purchase my first rain jacket and have never owned a pair of gumboots. I bought our children gumboots once and the spiders built a home in them before the children outgrew them. We own a few cheap umbrellas but they are not much good in a tropical downpour or horizontal rain. Our rain is usually so welcomed we don’t mind getting a little wet; or we just stay out of it!
It has stopped raining now and the sun is out. Time to go outside. Perhaps you know this nursery rhyme:. “Rain, rain, go away; come back another day.”
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