Rainy days

I want to like rainy days.

I want to enjoy the patter of drops on the roof, or even better on the leaves outside while sitting on the porch and watching the water fall from the sky.

Sometimes, I think I can see the grass turn greener as I watch it, see leaves unfurl on the tomato and basil plants.

Water is life, something we recognize in the water of baptism, and without water, the world would die.

But I never wake up hoping it rains. I want the sunny days, with bright blue skies and puffy white clouds and warmth on my face and back. I want to bask in the light, not wrap myself in a waterproof coat or huddle under an umbrella. My family can tell you that I hate being cold, and even more than that, I hate being wet and cold.

No one likes the metaphorical kind of rainy days either, days filled with arguments with friends and family, with tests failed or jobs lost, with illness or hard times.

We need those days just as much, though. No one goes through life with an endless string of sunny days, of success after success, of floating along like a puffy white cloud without experiencing the kind of conflict that clarifies values and the kind of struggle that develops strength — and helps us realize that we have reserves of strength we didn’t know we had.

It’s those rainy days that help us blossom and grow, just as surely as the rain helps the grass turn green and the vegetable plants put out new leaves. Sometimes they even help us branch out, to find new directions we never would have considered on our own.

None of that makes me wish for rainy days, even though I know we all need them. They mean changing plans, going to the library or to a movie or staying home instead of going to the beach. Even though I like the library, and movies, and home.

And the aftermath is messy. Rain and dirt, both needed to grow the garden, come together to make mud, mud that gets all over everything and makes more work for me.

Rain also makes the weeds grow, with plants springing up in the cracks in the sidewalk and the patio, growing sometimes six inches in a day behind the daylilies in the flowerbeds, or tangling with the branches of the thornbush, making me prick my fingers as I try to pull them away to give the roses room.

Those are small prices to pay, I know, the complaints of someone who would rather the world be perfect. But we live in an imperfect world, we creatures, and we are imperfect beings. Better for us to learn to love the rain, or at least appreciate what it does for us.