walkin' in the rain

The song was hot. The Shangri-Las who sang it were too (too hot). Walkin' in the rain. Lo, these many years I thought the sound of rain on a car roof or any tin roof was among the most evocative and lovely on the planet. Numero uno. Then, on Tuesday, I took an umbrella from the porch, was it blue and white or pink and white, slightly in need of repair with ribs unattached to fabric, and walked down Whittier in a torrent, a bit torrent of raindrops pelting the umbrella, with this laptop safely tucked in my backpack on my back. The exquisite pounding of the summer shower on the canopy of safety over my head. The delicious rain we are divorced from in our cars, SUVs, trucks, buses, trains, planes, apartments, homes, schools, universities, factories, country clubs, office buildings, coffee shops, garages, grocery stores, megamalls, and convenience stores open 24/7. This rain on the umbrella. My very own rain. My personal sound machine. A memory flash from the 1980s, when I worked in NYC: I was walking to work, at Random House, and a car drove by and inundated a young lady, probably also on her way to work. A taxi just launched a wave right over this woman. Kapow! Was she pissed and enraged? No, she laughed! She looked delighted. I remember that, I don't think I'm conjuring it up from nothing and nowhere, and even right then I got it. She got It. It with a cap T, oh did she get It and thank you. And as my friend Dr. Shiva said later Tuesday, "And why not? God who gives us the sunshine also gives us the rain. They are both from God." Rain, another good song.