Quick! First thing that comes to your mind when you think about a rainy winter day.

Maybe this?

  

 

 

Or this?                  

 

Or maybe something else altogether? Like me.

I used to think rain was a bother.

I’d look out and see that overcast, steely grey sky that meant rain and start to grumble.  Especially if I wasn’t home and had forgotten to bring an umbrella with  me (almost always) or rain boots (always). Certainly if it meant windy rain of the nasty, wintry cold variety. Ugh.  But, truth is, even that warm summer variety we had in Texas.

Traffic. Bad hair. Wet clothes. Cancelled sports activities. No cabs.

ARGH!!!!

And then I moved to Israel.

Once upon a time, not that long ago, one of the main topics of conversation in Israel from October to April was rainfall and the level of the water in Lake Kinneret. In a bad rainfall year, the level would go down and the national mood would go right down with it.

And with a few bad years in a row, it would get dangerously low.

I remember once showering at the gym and an old woman (she was probably the age I am now) getting angry with me for leaving the water on in the shower while I soaped up. I didn’t get it at first. Then I realized that, a long-time Jerusalem resident, this woman was used to taking “ship showers” all her life to conserve water.

I mean, SERIOUSLY?!?

(How could anyone brought up in North America in the 60’s possibly know that?)

Bad rain year followed bad rain year and I noticed that my ears started to perk up when people talked about rain and the level of the Kinneret and before I knew it I was talking about it, too.

There were years we couldn’t water our gardens…

                   

So rock gardens started springing up everywhere.

The price of water in our homes went up. Families were allotted a certain number of cubic feet of water at a reasonable price, according to the size of the family, and above that amount the price was astronomical. Families with teenagers who were always in the shower? Look out!

                                      Well, not quite.

I learned to appreciate those rain days. Wait for them expectantly. Smile at the steely grey sky and the sound of rain drops.

Then salinization happened. Israel made agreements with other countries, like Turkey, to buy up lots and lots of salinized water. Guaranteed an amount and a price for many years to come. No longer would we have to rely on rainfall to water our gardens or take our showers or irrigate our crops. Yay!

And then the rains came.

And came

   and came.

And the level of the Kinneret rose and rose and reached a safe level.

So now we’re “stuck” paying for all that salinized water even though we don’t “need” it. You’d think I’d start to grumble on rain days again.

But I woke up to a steely grey sky this morning and the sound of rain by mid morning.

I smiled and grabbed an umbrella before I headed down to a friend’s house for coffee.

Last night the rain spoke to me slowly,

saying,  

what joy to come falling out of the brisk cloud,

to be happy again, in a new way on earth!

That’s what it said as it dropped,

smelling of iron, and vanished like a dream

into the ocean and the branches below.

Then it was over.

The sky cleared.

And I was standing under a tree.

The tree was a tree with happy leaves,

and I was myself

and there were stars in the sky.

And the stars were also themselves at the moment,

at which moment my right hand was holding my left hand,

which was holding the tree, which was full of stars,

and the soft rain –

imagine! imagine!

The long, wondrous journeys still to be ours.

Mary Oliver

― Mary Oliver