In Defense of Rain (I guess)
My family and I just moved from sunny California to a place that gets a lot of rain. For months we flip-flopped on the decision and every time we told someone where we wanted to move, the response was the same, "Yeah, but the rain. How could you live with that much rain?"
We decided we could. We told ourselves: "We did it before, right?" referring to our year in Buenos Aires, which actually gets about 1.5 inches more rain annually than we get here in our new city. We analyzed this statistic like freaks before moving: OK, so it rains more in Buenos Aires, but maybe that just means BA gets sudden downpours with regular daily sun, while our new home will just drizzle and dump and stay perpetually gray. BA gets summer downpours, which are different (thanks to the unrelenting summer heat that renders downpours harmless).
That sort of stuff. We doubted ourselves. With the doubts came more support from friends, from the humorous: "Are you and Aimee attempting to turn your child into an amphibious creature?" to the untrue: "That town gets more rain and more people hooked on mood enhancers than any other city in the US other than Seattle".
So here we are, two weeks into a decision that took over a year to make. And we're loving it. True enough, we're moving into spring and we haven't been through a winter. But it has rained nearly every day. The sun has also burst through the clouds every day, in a far more dramatic presentation than the average sunny day in Cali. The smell of the air is so fresh and thick with life my breaths feel deeper than ever. The cherry and plum trees are exploding with blossoms, and the leaf buds are all slowly poking through on the maples and the elms and the beeches and hawthorns. Moss is everywhere. It's unbelievably beautiful.
I know, I know, we haven't been through winter. We're still in the honeymoon phase. But our spirits are high.
And, from now on, to anyone who asks me about the rain I have a pat response:
"Yeah, but it's a dry rain."
We decided we could. We told ourselves: "We did it before, right?" referring to our year in Buenos Aires, which actually gets about 1.5 inches more rain annually than we get here in our new city. We analyzed this statistic like freaks before moving: OK, so it rains more in Buenos Aires, but maybe that just means BA gets sudden downpours with regular daily sun, while our new home will just drizzle and dump and stay perpetually gray. BA gets summer downpours, which are different (thanks to the unrelenting summer heat that renders downpours harmless).
That sort of stuff. We doubted ourselves. With the doubts came more support from friends, from the humorous: "Are you and Aimee attempting to turn your child into an amphibious creature?" to the untrue: "That town gets more rain and more people hooked on mood enhancers than any other city in the US other than Seattle".
So here we are, two weeks into a decision that took over a year to make. And we're loving it. True enough, we're moving into spring and we haven't been through a winter. But it has rained nearly every day. The sun has also burst through the clouds every day, in a far more dramatic presentation than the average sunny day in Cali. The smell of the air is so fresh and thick with life my breaths feel deeper than ever. The cherry and plum trees are exploding with blossoms, and the leaf buds are all slowly poking through on the maples and the elms and the beeches and hawthorns. Moss is everywhere. It's unbelievably beautiful.
I know, I know, we haven't been through winter. We're still in the honeymoon phase. But our spirits are high.
And, from now on, to anyone who asks me about the rain I have a pat response:
"Yeah, but it's a dry rain."
posted by Travelburro at 9:05 AM
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