Rainy Evening

I've written about it before, but the sound of rain on a metal roof is truly one of the most soothing sounds in the world. It's been so dry here, and we've needed the rain to clean and refresh everything, but there's the simple spiritual soothing of being warm, dry, and flannel-pj-clad on a cold and rainy night in late autumn.

Nights like this throw my mind back to nights in Japan when I'd have to ride my bike home in rain. I had a rain suit that kept the worst of the wet out, and I managed to varying degrees of success the art of riding a bike while holding an umbrella, but really nothing helps when you have to ride a bike in the rain. The cold damp drops creep into the bones, the cars full of warm dry people race past, and by the time you can get home, it feels like you'll never be warm or dry again. I would go up the three flights of stairs to my little apaato, turn my tiny heating unit up, and stay in the shower and the deep Japanese bath until I felt myself start to feel less like a block of ice and more like a human being again. Sometimes, I can still feel that chill, like the last bits of snow that stay in deep shade and don't melt.

Having lived through nights like that help me appreciate these other nights, these nights of central heating and easy dryness. When I stepped out of the church tonight, I had only steps to go from sanctuary door to the door of a four-wheeled sanctuary from the rain, and as I watched the leaves drifting down from almost-bare branches in the light of my high beams, I was grateful not to be on that silver five-speed bike trying to get home on a dark November night.