December is on. In all the novels that I read, december rhymes with winter. It’s a snow-month, flakes of white ‘substances’ that are as exotic to me as marihuana, and as exciting. For me, december is colder. Dimmer, thinner, wispier than other months. And definitely less livelier. Everything seems to wind down after a long, lovely (ugly) year, and I catch my breath for a while, now and again to let in the last of a year that I enjoyed (wasted).

Have you seen rain? Not slight drizzly rain, not the boring drops that fall and then pitter away like boring drops of rain. Not that, like this one:

One day, it started raining, and for six months it didn’t stop…I’ve been to all kinds of rain in Vietnam, slow rain, hard rain, sleet rain, rain that came in sideways and sometimes, rain that seemed to come out of the ground itself. (A quote from Forrest Gump, reproduced from memory)

I’ve seen rain, though I haven’t seen snow: slow rain, hard rain, rain that comes in sideways, and sometimes, rain that seemed to come out of the ground itself. Once, when it was raining – really raining, not like the boring drops of decemberwinter – I went out on the terrace and soaked it all in (really). The next day, I got a huge cold and the beginnings of asthma, but I didn’t mind.

I think, in small ways like this, people are blessed in different ways. I can’t see snow, but I’ve been given rain as a substitute. And I think I love rain, and what it means and what it means for the snow around me.