Rainy Day Memories

It has been a rainy week here in Charleston which made me reminisce on some of my other happy memories from rainy days.

My very first memory was actually in the rain. I was about two years old and my mom and I were walking across stepping stones getting from a parking lot to our apartment in Houston.

Most of my week in southern England was in the rain but we were happy every minute of that trip too. I think London is built to be seen in the rain… all of the museums and bridges and flea markets…the buildings actually change color in the rain. Rainy day London has an art deco feel to it… it feels like I have stepped into a F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. There is a great picture of me at Stonehenge all bundled up with my umbrella… the rolling countryside behind me is a blur of rain.

I remember one day late in the summer in my early teens… I had just gotten home from a long trip to visit my family in Texas. My mom and our dog Barney went down to Chapoquoit Beach and ran in the soft sand and warm rain. It was such a memorable convergence of weather, nature, and us that I marked that day in my calendar when I got home.

I don’t remember exactly when or where this was but another memorable rainy day was when we went to Cracker Barrel to get take out for dinner on a road trip. I was rocking in a rocking chair on the porch watching the rain storm and lighting light up the sky. My mom and I noticed a particularly fantastic bolt of lighting come the whole way to the ground but didn’t think much of it… until we got back to our motel and found out it was our motel that had been hit by lighting and there was no electricity. It was so humid that everyone had to sit out on the porches for lack of A/C in their rooms.