Rain

I had been waiting for the rain to come. Not wishing for it or willing it, but wondering when it was about to start. Up until now it seemed like we'd had a very unusually dry fall and something odd had been tugging at me, waiting for the rain to come back. This is not because I wanted it, but more because it just feels wrong this time of year to not have it around.

I don't know if I can really describe it to people who don't know it. If you're from Seattle, you've probably experienced it. I've heard on good authority that they have the same in Prince Rupert and Halifax too. It falls in teaspoon-sized drops that come down so fast, in such close proximity and with such regularity that there is no way to escape them. It cuts through your clothing and leaves you soaked. It cuts through umbrellas too. I don't think anyone's immune.

The world becomes grey and perpetually damp for weeks and it seems rarely, if ever to let up. It leaves me cold, with itchy, damp toes and wrists and a constant craving for home because home is warm and dry and nothing else is.

Yesterday on my way to school the bus driver changed the name of the bus from "SFU" to "SUNSHINE HILLS", which had a lot of people confused. "Hop on!" he said, "The sun is shining, the birds are singing on Burnaby Mountain!"

He got my hopes up, which made me that much more disappointed to find that school was the same old award-winning architectural grey dungeon, only flooded. How it can win awards and international acclaim and be so profoundly unsuited to the climate it is located in is beyond me.

I waded through the courtyards and pathways to class.