Wet

Because I walk so much, I sometimes get caught out in storms. I don't always mean to, but sometimes it simply happens that way. Two summers ago, I had left work and walked over to the library to return some books. I could see a tremendous storm building up in the west, I could feel the excitement and tension in the air preceding it. The librarian, an elderly woman named Jean who knits colorful sweaters for teddy bears and sells them to raise funds for a children's camp up in the mountains, told me I should wait it out, as the rain had just begun to patter down as I was turning to go. I decided to head out anyway.

I don't know what I was thinking. Maybe I wasn't thinking. I feel compelled to be out in these great storms. They have something to give me and to communicate to me. It is like a relative has come visiting, and I need to go greet him. We Mohawk believe we are related to the storms that rise so dramatically out of the west, and so, when I hear thunder, if circumstances allow, I go outside and greet the storm. Nothing fancy, just a "Hello, Grandfather Thunder," and a "Welcome, we have missed you."

I felt the softly cool touch of the rain as I went down the library steps, and as I made my way to the corner, the rain pressed down harder on my skin and hair. And despite my desire to be out in the storm, I was also feeling slightly worried and fretful about being caught out in the rain like that, for the whole village to see, like a crazy person! Didn't I know better? (Obviously not.)

That day had been dreadfully hot and sticky, as it often is here in July, and the rain felt brightly cold and thrilling. As I turned the corner around a large well-trimmed hedge, I came upon two kids, a boy and a girl, around 8 and 10 years old. The boy was on his bike and he was shirtless. The girl was lagging further back, walking along in the wet. I called out to the boy, as he was nearer by, "It's raining!"

And he sang out, "Doesn't It feel great?"

His joy in the moment brought me straight back to my own truth: Yes! It did feel great, and I was excited to be out in it!

And yet I hurried on, thinking I might make it home before the storm got too strong, but as I turned into the alley I take as a short cut (this village is crisscrossed with alleys, back from the days when people had sheds and barns out back, and now instead of housing their animals out there, they park their cars there), the rain was pouring on down. The sky was a'rumble with thunder and a'glitter with lightning. The storm was full upon us, I could feel its life vibrating all around me. I decided to shelter under the leaves of a small maple beside a barn. I huddled up close to the trunk of the tree, and it afforded me shelter for a brief time, but as the leaves got wetter and wetter in the deluge, I got wetter and wetter too. It finally got to the point where I knew I was getting almost as wet under the tree, just standing there, as I would if I kept walking home, so I decided to head on out again. I took off my slippery flip flops and stuffed them into my backpack.

The rain was pelting me now, and I was chattering and laughing to myself about it, partly out of self-consciousness because I was still worried about what people would think if they saw me out there. It was such a powerful storm! It was crazy rain, lunatic rain, driving down and pouring down and pelting the earth and washing it all furiously clean. But its power also reminded me to talk to Grandfather Thunder, and so whenever I heard another great BOOM and rumble, I spoke words of greeting and gratitude for the rain to him, and I told him I had missed him and that the earth had missed him and was thirsty for the blessing of the rain. No one heard me, or probably even saw me, despite my worries, for I truly was the only person out there walking through it!

I kept heading along south, marvelling at the water cascading down the hill. When I turned right to continue up the hill, towards the west, the power of the rain was truly awe inspiring. It was flashing and flooding down the hill like a great river of wild water horses, a brilliant stream of wet. I was quite soaked by then--as soaked, in fact, as if I had been swimming. That gave me new reason to feel self-conscious because my bra was plain to see under my soaked t-shirt, and in my modesty I was holding the shirt out away from my skin so all the people who were not out there couldn't see it too.

When I got near to Ray's house, I saw his son out under the maple on their small bit of lawn. He is about my age, and he is a wreck of a man. I don't know what happended to him to make him that way, but he looks like a lightning struck survivior barely hanging on to vitality. His long hair is grey and his skin is grey and he sits on the step and smokes and talks quietly to the cat and looks like gloom personified. He is a creature of the shadows who often scurried away at my approach, as if my friendly greeting and smile was a bit too much, a bit too bright, to bear. It got so I felt bad whenever he did that, and toned down my greetings in the hope he would not run away. But he ran away anyway. So there he was, out on the lawn in the storm like King Lear on the blasted heath except he was not raging. Rather, he was shirtless, and his head was thrown back, and rain was cascading down his skinny body. 'Two crazies out in the storm,' is what I thought to myself in that lightning bright instant of recognition. He looked at me then. He met my eye and he saw me clearly. He smiled. I smiled back, and then I laughed aloud at the fact of the two of us there, and as I laughed he called out, "Wet!"

We were like two birds meeting, the walking crow laughing, the great standing crane answering with a loud crane squawk.

Ever since then, when I pass by and he is out on the step smoking, he doesn't hurry away. He looks at me, he meets my eye, and he responds to my quiet, "Hey," with a soft grunt.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai