When it Rains

It rained yesterday. It rained virtually all day. Most of the time it was kind of a drizzle and I wasn't even sure it was raining unless I went close to a window to look out. I was going to write an entry yesterday, but first I entered one at The Great Sea. Actually, first I tried to enter one at The Great Sea. My lack of familiarity with how these blog things work resulted in my losing the entirety of my planned message, leaving me feeling frustrated and foolish. I slapped together a quick something to vent some of that frustration and shut things down. For a software program to allow work to be so easily - and accidentally - lost is just plain crappy programming. I knew programmers who lost their jobs writing better software than that. I suppose I have no right to complain, though. I doubt I could have written this. Not anymore.

I wonder what it is about rain which raises feelings of nostalgia. I like rain. Most of the time. I like storms, too. I always have. I'm not keen on destruction. Don't get me wrong about that. My own house looks like something from the hills of poverty because of storm damage. The siding has been ripped off a good portion and the exposed boards are now being protected with a most attractive royal blue plastic tarp. Why wasn't it repaired? I'm not going to go there now. Suffice to say that the choice was fixing the house and losing it, or keeping the house and letting it look like something from an old Ma and Pa Kettle movie. Well, I guess the Kettles have come to roost.

I remember when I was young we lived further north. Out in the country. My family lived in an eighty-year-old, two-story, haunted farmhouse. It was actually quite large, considering it predated 1900. I seem to recall we had a lot of windstorms up there then. My family called them windstorms, not thunderstorms. We had a lot of giant oak trees clustered around the house like secret service men guarding the president. This was especially so to the east and south. The squirrels loved it. They could run along branches and jump to the house and back with ease. To the west and north this was not so. On the west side, the back side, there was a space large enough to play sandlot baseball or football, and so we did. The protection for this area came from a decaying apple orchard. Most of the fruit trees had died, being replaced by poplar, or some such tree. There were two apple trees remaining and five plum trees. I think they were plums. Do plum trees grow in Minnesota? I just remember they produced some smaller, garbage fruit that no one in our family particularly cared for. The birds took care of those. The two apple trees, although standing at least twenty feet tall, might produce a dozen apples between the two of them. They were representative of the entire place. Everything was in decay. Including the house. There were many places one could peer outside from inside without using the aide of a door or window. It could get quite cold in the wintertime, I assure you. And in a good wind the entire house shook like a dog shedding water.

I remember a tree which stood apart to the north. This was where we parked our cars. We usually had at least three, but sometimes up to five. Two were always kept in working order. The others often became part supply depots for the two which worked. But I remember that this tree, an oak, seemed to take special damage during nearly every storm. More than once I recall standing in our kitchen area looking out at the wind's activity and see part of that tree break off with a loud crack and fall with a thunder of its own to the earth. After the storm, the fallen portion became a playground for myself and my sisters as we explored the once inaccessable reaches of the mighty oak's frame. Then, in would come someone with a chain saw. They would cut it up and haul it away.

Originally, at least when we arrived, there had been two trees. But one suffered worse than the other, being slowly whittled away with each storm until, at last defeated and without strength to continue, the entire tree fell over and died. We climbed over its carcass, noticing for the first time the decay which had weakened it to the point of death. I wondered about the remaining tree. Was it also decaying from inside? How long would it last? Every year it lost another piece. The once strong, stately, beautiful and full oak was fast becoming brittle, thin and pitiful. How long did it have?

If I recall correctly, it outlasted the house, which burned down. It outlasted us. I think it was still standing after we rebuilt and then sold out. I wonder if it is still there, standing like a pillar defying the winds which ever seek to blow it over. Despite the absence of so much of its beauty, it still stood strong in defiance of the winds which sought its final demise. But the tree cannot win. Not ultimately. The winds will never quit. Ever will they blow, and beat and seek out weakness. And if ever the wind succeeds, the tree will be lost. The tree may win ten thousand victories, but the wind will never fail. The wind wins once - and the tree is gone.

And then a shoot will appear where once a mighty tree stood. A seed, perhaps? Or is it simply an undead root system seeking once again to attain the heights? I have seen this in my life. It give me hope, for once again I am down. The winds of life have blown me over, and I have crashed to the ground in a broken heap. The young ones play and laugh in my demise. The saws come to cut away the pieces and haul me away for fuel. But my root system remains, only slightly poisoned. Like a new shoot my face has broken the surface and I feel the cold wind of life upon my face. I will rise again.