When It Rains

As a child, my parents had rented out a cottage every summer. We enjoyed this cottage so much that they would continue to extend our stays there every year, so we would spend birthdays in the fall there, sometimes even New Years Eve. Every so often I get a flashback from a memory that feels so visceral and real because of how I felt during the memory but hazy in some of its details. I can’t be quite sure if this memory is real or not and my mom isn’t able to corroborate it because it was from before I was 9. But this memory felt like the happiest I had ever been. 

It starts with me and my sister and a third friend, who I can’t remember, being at the cottage with my parents in the summer on an unseasonably rainy day. It’s the kind of rain that’s hot because of how humid the air is. I imagine we were bored of being holed up inside and complaining about it to my mom, who we had designated as our social and activities Manager for the summer. I remember us complaining to her about how torrential the rain was and how we missed the outside where we were used to playing for hours every day in the sun. She said, why can’t you just go outside while it’s raining?” We argued “No, we can’t do that, we’ll get our clothes all wet!” She said, “Okay, then just go in your underwear.” We looked at her like she was the dumbest person alive for suggesting this. Then we contemplated the possibility. Eventually, at my mom’s insistence, we decided there was no reason we couldn’t go outside and we stripped down to our underwear and undershirts in the front hall entrance of the cottage and she opened the front door for us and out we went. 

It was pouring rain. The air was warm and the sky was cloudy but we could still see where we were going because it was the middle of the day. First, we covered the front lawn where we had set up a croquet game. We ran around the lawn for a bit until we decided to run through the forest, where there were natural walking trails for us. We’d hit a dead end and double back until we found another trail we had walked down a thousand times but never in the rain and never like on this day, and definitely never in our underwear. We screamed at how much fun we were having. It didn’t feel real or like we were allowed to be there. 

We could hear the splashing and squishing of our little feet hitting the velvet moss on the forest floor. It felt warmer, more welcoming, more comfortable than I had experienced it on a dryer, sunnier day. I had obviously had fun before, but never like this. I didn’t know this kind of joy was readily available to me. We were soaked in rainwater, dirty from jumping in puddles we couldn’t see the bottoms of. We tried making the biggest splashes we could and it didn’t matter because we weren’t even wearing boots we’d have to clean later. The bark on the tree was softer when we touched it. Every piece of forest gently holding us back as we ran. We squealed like the little piglets we were, muddying ourselves and then immediately jumping into a cleaner puddle of water that washed off the mud. It was heaven. We were free.

It continued to downpour all day and we spent most of it outside. Our regular playing field transformed by the rain into a softer, more slippery outlet for our boredom. We got back to the cottage, our feet, legs, and arms caked in wet mud, our hair dripping onto the floor. My mom wrapped us in towels and immediately ran the bath. The soapy bathwater was more welcoming than ever after our baptism by rain.