raindrops keep falling on my stead

We have all experienced the sensation.

A small sound wakens you in the early morning, but it is so out of context that, for at least an instant, you are transported to another place and time. It happened to me this morning.
 
I have no idea what time it was. It was definitely after midnight and before the morning arrival of the sun. So, maybe 3. Or so.

It was a familiar sound. A rhythmic patter on the lamina that tops the chimney of my shower. The clever and much-loved grackles often use the surface to crack open nuts. But it was too early for them. And the rhythm was different. 

It could only be one thing. Rain. What was out of context is that we are currently in our dry season.

The rain in Barra falls mainly on the summer -- and fall. But, because it is weather and simply scoffs at our silly desire to tame nature with orderly boxes, it can rain here whenever the conditions permit.

But rarely in February. And taking that into account, the rain put on a perfunctory performance. The weather equivalent Highlights from Hamlet -- or The Best of Benny Hill.  It came in three short wavelets -- barely leaving a trace of itself when the clouds, proud of their playlet, blew off to surprise inhabitants in another part of coastal Mexico.

In the summer, we look forward to every rainstorm (except those that are far too generous with their watery gifts). The rain beats down both the heat and humidity. Temporarily. But some respite is good enough to break the monotony.

Today's unexpected sprinkles (and even that may be too generous of a description) reminded me of last August when my brother, sister-in-law, and I helped move my mother out of her house. As always happens in these tasks, the layers of nostalgia were as complex and varied as a fossil bed.

I found a photograph of me on the beach in Greece (where I was living at the time) enjoying a local lunch with some Greek acquaintances and two university friends who had come to stay a month at my house. I had no memory of the lunch. And I certainly had no memory of that bathing suit.

But as soon as I put the photograph back in the pile, the memory of that long-lost day was gone just as swiftly as our brief rain this morning. Refreshing while it was there. Forgotten as soon as it passed.

Maybe that is why some people hang on to the scraps that memorialize moments gone by. All of those motherly flash-cube-lit holiday dinners with family members looking as if they were just one step away from a mug shot. Or the second grade poem that adorned the family refrigerator for decades and was proof positive that the author had not inherited his grandmother's skill of poetry.

Even if all of the detritus of our pasts should one day disappear (and for those of us who live long enough to have time rob of of our memories), there will be other grace notes of experience that pop up like this morning's rain. Not necessarily to remind us of our pasts (or someone else's past), but to give us one more chance to celebrate the day with something different in our lives.

Maybe that is why we sang of "showers of blessings" at church in my youth.

May we all have plenty more.