All waiting for the rain

Perhaps waiting for the rain is old-fashioned, I think, while I wait for the rain (the “sudden, unthinkable rain”, as the Valencian said). Outside, continuous thunder can be heard, which sounds like the buzzing of planes, because it doesn’t stop, and it’s not sunny. It hasn’t rained for three months, and I no longer remember if back then, when I was little, when the old people said it hadn’t rained for so long, that much time had passed like now. Children, back then, wanted rain to wear the kangaroo (like a fanny pack) and wellington boots. Like the children now, we didn’t want umbrellas. The umbrella, like waiting for the rain, was for old people.

The cat comes in, meowing, letting me know it has started. Four drops, for now, which perhaps won’t amount to more, and that smell of Burgundy wine. Rain in the countryside is something else entirely. Windows, doors closed. The ditch well cleaned, so the water doesn’t fall on the neighbor’s. Will the drips from the vines hold? Will it do harm? All the birds have settled in the neighbor’s cypress tree, where they are squatting. The group of idiots from the low-cost rural tourism house further up are already coming out with a black garbage bag so big that it’s impossible to fit through the holes of the new sustainable and ecological bins they’ve installed for us. They’ll leave it on the ground and run off. The neighbor, who is teleworking, signals to me that he no longer has wifi. The Montserrat mountain is visible, sharp, black, with grey clouds behind it. Climate change—no farmer in the world denies it, because they see it every day—makes me feel part of this rain. I feel like going out to get wet, to soak myself, to look at the sky and in a way to be grateful for the miracle. It hasn’t rained for so long that the phenomenon seems comparable to the eclipse we are waiting for. Yes, if a downpour comes, I’ll go out and catch the rain. But perhaps it will pass by, because here it always passes by, the old women say.