There will come soft rains

I love that winter is ending and it's almost spring. One thing I just realized I miss about spring and summer, something you don't get in the winter, is a proper rainstorm. Yes it rains during the winter, but they're weak, pussy rains. Winter rains are just limp hail, an attempt at snow that melts before it ever hits the ground. The only winter storms you get are blizzards, which are magnificent in their own right, but just aren't the same as rainstorms.

I love rainstorms, though. I love the way thunder sounds in the distance, and the way it cracks so hard and close that all the windows and doors in the house shake (you don't really get that effect in the dorms.) I love being on the front porch, or driving down the highway in the car, and watching the lightning split the sky in sharp white lines, forging a new jagged pattern each time it strikes. I love when the storm is so close that lightning and thunder align in a perfect show of visual and aural shock. I love the way the wind blows the tree branches in silhouettes outside the windows, and the way everything gets calm and muggy right before the storm. But I especially love the sound of a constant, blanket downpour; just that soft but persistent pattering in the background. I love the heavy, but fresh humidity in the air that comes during and after the rain - a humidity so distinct from the stale stuffiness the height of summer brings. I love the way the sky gets so dark in the middle of the day, changing from bright blue to stormy yellow and grey. I love the ominous cloud formations, bordering on spirals, threatening tornadoes... occasionally backing those threats.

I love the way summer rains can come with no storm at all, just that steady drizzle that appear out of nowhere and leaves just as quickly. I love the way you can stand in one place and watch a sheet of rain move towards you, faster than you would ever have imagined.

I love that winter is almost over.

*****

Today I listened to some really good blues music that was on my computer, but that I haven't listened to in several months. It was really nice. It reminded me of all the places at home I would go to listen to that music. Eating Thai food in the twilight along the banks of the majestic Missouri River while someone builds a fire and we all listen to live blues. Or eating catfish outside at Mojo's while a band blasts from inside. Or hearing it wafting from the CD player inside the house as everyone sits, slightly drunk, on back patios smothered with potted plants and creative candle holders, each with a tiny, flickering flame illuminating the edges of a green lawn, itself littered with fireflies that mimic the dancing candlelight on the porch.

I really miss my hometown. I don't really miss the house, or the people, or the places I used to go. I just miss being there. This podunk ass of a town doesn't even have the same geography, and belongs to some foreign "tri-state area," not the "mid-MO" I'm so used to. It's as if I moved out of state after all.