Four hours of wonder

In the deep darkness of the 5 a.m. morning last Saturday, I heard a strange sound. I had to dig into the far-back recesses of my memory to figure out what it was, the part of my mind where I keep those fuzzy memories of being in the church nursery as a baby or of blowing out the candles on my third birthday cake. It took a while, but I eventually pinpointed the sound: rain!

Texas has turned colorless this summer. The skies are pale, the grass is dead, and the flowers just don't exist at all. For the past two months we've had 100+ degrees of stillness, with not a drop of water falling from the sky and not a hint of a breeze rustling the leaves. Between the drought and the heat, Texas seems to be falling apart.

The earth is splitting:



The bricks are cracking:



The foundations are shifting:



We need rain.

That's why this Saturday, when that strange sound woke me at 5 a.m. I got up to watch the miracle that is water falling straight from the sky onto the cracked earth. I postponed my run to sit around my apartment and listen to the rain. At 6:30, I went to the park to run for an hour, and I don't think I stopped marveling once during those 60 minutes. The cold rain hitting my skin, the water collecting in puddles, the drops sitting on the blades of glass -- incredible. Sixty minutes of pure childlike awe.

The rain lasted till 9 a.m., and I sat on my porch watching it until it stopped. Texas had returned to normal by Sunday: 105 degrees, no breeze, no clouds, no rain. Now the earth is still split open, the bricks are still cracked, and the foundations are still shifting. The ponds still smell like rotting fish, the grass is still sharp enough to cut a bare foot, and I still have to drink 75-90 oz of water a day. But at least I have the memory of those four hours of rain. That's something, right?