Maybe I'm all wet, but ...

Saturday afternoon, J and I returned from a drumming gig at the Oxford, Ohio farmers' market. It was hot and humid, and when I finally joined her in the pool, the afternoon popup storm was waiting to begin. It reminded me of a long-ago visit to Puerto Rico, where the saying is, "If you don't like our weather, wait a minute."

J climbed out to attend to other matters, but I decided to stay and see what might transpire. I put up a lawn umbrella at the side of the pool to sit under, and turned off the normally turbulent pool pump. As the current died away, the sprinkles began.

I sat in the pool with my eyes as close to the water as my nose would permit. Each raindrop splash instantly created a bubble about half an inch across. At first, I could count them, but very quickly, it became an impossible task. And as the rain became steadier, the bubbles were burst immediately by the drops that came more frequently. Soon, I saw no bubbles at all, but only small columns of water popping up, sporting tiny spheres on their tips.

The ripples generated by the pelting rain countered across each other in patterns of interlaced diamonds and circles. I submerged to listen to the music of the showers as I had many times in my childhood at the lake. This time, however, I could no longer hear the soft, high singing of the raindrops that I loved so much as a youngster. But I could hear the pinging and popping that is heard nowhere else in our lives as the rain dented the surface and the waves fanned out.

As I emerged, a sudden menace of thunder reached my hears. It turned out to be the only rumble of the afternoon, but it sent me back to the garage to change into my clothes. I went upstairs to the Zinn Center (named after a beloved friend of ours in Florida) which is essentially a framed, screened 8-foot cube on the deck with a tarp on top. The pattering and then pounding of the rain on the canvas brought back memories of what J refers to as my "two camping trips".

It was a day to be savo(u)red. If I had a waterproof camera, I could have taken one picture, which would have saved a thousand words.