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Let me tell you about the rain.

Rain where I grew up is so different than the rain where I live now. This is about the former. You may already know it. This may not be news to you. Or it could be revelatory.

Still, let me tell you about it.

The rain is warm. It falls straight down in neat sheets or it hurdles in sideways on wind, strong enough for a little girl to lean her whole body weight against swinging doors and not fall through them.

The rain rolls in on menacing clouds, with its own sound and light show. You can see it coming. You can hear it coming. Growing up around it, you learn to judge speed and distance in order to milk a few more minutes of time outside before you realize you’re doing complex algebra in your head, before you ever learn to do complex algebra on paper.

When the rain starts slow, you can see steam rising off the asphalt and there’s nothing like the smell of the road and the grass and the soil in the first few minutes. Even the tiniest droplets are still the size of marbles. It is soothing. It is meditative.

When the rain comes on fast, it’s like a speeding train: relentless, uncaring destruction. It can rain so hard that there’s no point in running to get out of it. It can rain so hard that it’s unsafe to drive. It can summon rivers in culverts and flood air traffic control towers when their roofs cave in. It can make umbrellas and rain boots pointless. Thunder can rattle the very foundation under your feet. Lightning can illuminate the blackest night. The three together can put a full, nonnegotiable stop to any plans you thought you had. Then a half hour later it’s over. Until the next wave rolls through.

Fast or slow, it cleans everything.

And I miss it. I miss that terrible, amazing, fantastic, old-testament kind of rain.

I love where I live now for so many reasons. Weather included. Some of them would even preclude even the possibility of that sort of rain. But I do miss the rain.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take a glass of scotch and a book to my parents’ back porch and enjoy the rain.