Rainy Season

Today it is pouring down rain in New York.  On a thoroughly wet day like this I always think of Thailand and rainy season at the girl's home.  Endless rounds of duck-duck-goose in the play room with the littlest ones.  Laying on bunk beds in the high school dorm listening in wonder while the girls sing Akha harmonies in rounds.  I remember turning the fan on high and putting hot, sweaty, preschoolers to nap with a book.  Laying in bed at night listening to the soothing plunkety-plunk-plunk of hard rain on a tin roof.   Inevitably, the boredom and cabin fever become too much, and one day we simply take the girls out into it.  Even our house mother, the golden gatekeeper of rules, can be seen dancing on the basketball court; soft, warm, rain coursing over her face.

One afternoon, I found a group of imaginative young girls playing "ship" in one of our drying sheds.  These sheds are merely tin covered cement patios criss-crossed with clothes lines so we can dry bedding and school uniforms during the weather.  On this day, the sheets blowing in the wind and the sprays of rain sneaking in the open sides of the shed suggested the deck of a ship to happy young minds.  When I discovered the girls there and asked what they were doing they shyly told me looking embarrassed.  I remembered a quote by writer Kay Boyle - "I had the most satisfactory of childhoods because my mother turned out to be exactly my age."  I could see I had only one choice.  I sat down, hung onto a post and begin bailing "water".  The delighted girls  made me their Captain and we spent the rest of the afternoon snug among our blowing sails.  It remains one of my fondest memories.

So here I sit, huddled by my barely working heating unit, watching the cold slush terrorizing the upper east side and I wish I was in Thailand.  Even though I never imagine saying this while living through it:  I pine a little for rainy season.  There is just something about hot days, rainy nights, damp clothes and all those little girls who have spilled fingernail polish inside my suitcase.  

- Rosemary