The First

I will forget, sometime in December, say, that there was a night when I stood in my kitchen listening to the first rainfall of the season and almost got teary-eyed because it sounded so beautiful.

I will forget, when things get wet-to-the-point-of-never-really-drying a few months hence, that I went out for a run this evening, managed not to beat the rain, came home wet not so much from the exertion of my workout but from the water falling from the sky, and loved it.

I will forget, on those days when it's raining so hard that even leaving the house becomes a logistical challenge, how I reveled earlier in the smell of newly wet and still warm cement as I ran.

And I will forget, when it's dark at 5 p.m. and that darkness is only made heavier for being so sodden and cold, that something in me was ever ok with this sign that we're inexorably turning the corner towards fall.

But for the moment, I silence iTunes, and for a few minutes just sit and listen to the low hiss of cars on Laguna driving over wet pavement, listen to a steady drip-drip-drip on the back porch that suggests some re-caulking of the walls there lies ahead for me, listen to the tiny music of what must be individual drops hitting the leaves of the tree in the backyard. And for the moment I swear that nothing has ever sounded sweeter.