Rain!

It's been dry here, unusually dry. We don't expect to get much rain in the Pacific Northwest between the 4th of July and the end of September, but this year was extreme. We had the driest August-September of the 65 years since they started tracking it, and the second-driest July-September. And it didn't end there. Our fall rains didn't begin until this last Friday, October 12.

It was such a relief to see darkened sidewalks when I got up Friday morning, even though no more rain fell that day until about 8:00 in the evening. It didn't matter that it wasn't raining at the moment; the air was warm and moist and welcoming, balmy.

Grief has made me irritable, but some of that was eased when the rains began, and especially as they've continued through the weekend. It feels like a homecoming, a reassurance that the world is still familiar.

Sandy was a Western Washington girl born and bred, and
she'd have been frustrated by the endless dry weather,
rejoicing at the rain's return with me this weekend.

I wasn't the only one irritable, either. Turns out there's a version of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) that occurs when there's too much sun. We know a lot about the winter SAD up here; many people have lights to help their moods when our days grow short and sometimes never get light. But we don't usually have to worry about too much sun and dryness.

It's even more reassuring that it's Seattle rain that has returned. It rained much of the afternoon today, and it sounded quite heavy within the house. But when I went outside to feed Cubbie, I wandered the yard for several minutes looking for him (never found him, unfortunately) and talked with Sadie, another stray, who was nesting in a dry corner of the compost bin. There were drops of water on my clothing, but I wasn't exactly wet, and within ten minutes of being inside, I was completely dry. That's just how our rain is supposed to be, a pleasant backdrop to our lives but not an impediment. (There was thunder this afternoon, which is unusual, but it just sounded like an enthusiastic celebration of the rain's return.)

Somehow, Sandy's absence hurts less now that the air is friendly and damp again. The shortening days are less lonely with the nourishing pitter-patter on the windows. It feels much more natural to have trees losing their leaves; when they were falling dry, it felt like they were dying, but now leaves on the ground are part of the seasonal cycles. Despair recedes; nestiness and the desire to cook and bake and read all rise to the surface. It's a very good thing.