First Rain

On Friday morning as I was preparing the Rosh Hashanah meal my daughter yelled ‘It’s raining!’
I dashed outside but the few drops had already fallen and had hardly left their mark on the parched pavement. I returned to the kitchen.

A couple of minutes later my daughter was yelling again. ‘It’s raining – really raining’.
She was right, it was really raining. Not the usual first sprinkle of water – a few fat, dusty drops that splash on the ground and evaporate again before we can register their presence. It was raining, raining hard, pouring with rain.

I stood outside and my daughter joined me as I held out my arms to experience the liquid blessing on my bare skin.
I phoned my husband and held the phone skywards for him to hear the rain.

After only a minute I was actually wet and went to stand under the roof of our entrance ocasionally poking out my head to feel the rain on my scalp. My daughter rushed back into the flat for an umbrella and Wellingtons then she paraded up and down our road.

Soon there were puddles on the ground and after just a few minutes our whole roadwas an inch-deep puddle such that we had to step back from the pavement as a car past incautiously fast throwing up a spectacular spray.

Our neighbour came home with his holiday groceries and smiled indulgently at our wild antics and when the wind and pushed the rain cloud from over our heads I too continued preparing for the New Year holiday.

ES