hannah | It's how it falls.

I didn't grow up with downpours. I'd read about them and had some idea of what they were, but until I moved out of California and to the East Coast - even until I moved to Pittsburgh, which is as Midwestern as the Eastern US gets - I'd never experienced one. Even now, after almost a decade in the East, I still don't really know how to think about them.

Today I stood in one.

It wasn't that I got caught in it by surprise: I'd been in the gym's locker room when it began, and someone who came in for her workout showed me how drenched she'd gotten from two blocks' walking. I could've stayed inside for the next half-hour or so, reading magazines and sipping coffee in the little cafe area, but I figured, my apartment is just two blocks away and I've got dry clothes there.

So I headed out, and it went from bad to worse. Not just heavy rain, but harsh rain. Severe rain. Rain enough to make me run through it to get back faster, even as I got wetter. And rain enough to make me stop and smell, breathe deep, of water on pavement and in the air, the scent of lakes and rivers suspended around me, swimming with both feet on the ground.

I walked into my building and stopped. I thought about just how wet I'd gotten, how it was still pouring down, that I was at my building and I had clean clothes upstairs. I looked out from the doorway to see the rain coming down the way I can look up and see between snowflakes, and I thought how I didn't have anywhere I needed to go.

Then I stashed my gym bag just inside the doorway where it wouldn't get wetter, and walked out into the rain.

This morning, I'd woken up out of sorts and it got worse from there. A tension headache set in around nine and didn't let up, untouched by aspirin and caffeine. It was bad enough to cut my workout short because while I'd feel better after a workout, it couldn't be too much of a workout to make it worse. So I was just back to neutral after everything until I walked out into the rain.

I didn't go far. I just stood there, letting it come down. I held out my hands and watched the water on my skin. The colors were flattened but the sounds were different. Not rain against walls or windows, but rain against the ground. My hair got wet, my clothes were soaked, and I cupped my hands to see how much I could catch. I kept thinking, how wonderful it is that we have rain. Here, as we are now, we have rain.

I kept thinking, this is rain as I'm starting to learn it.

I stood there a while, letting it fall onto my face, watching a few people try to get out of it as quickly as possible. I looked at the water threatening to overflow the gutters and the how soaked my shirt had gotten. It was coming down hard enough I was practically showering, my hair wet all the way through, and it still smelled like I was swimming. That clean, solid, fluid scent.

I could've run inside and gone right to my apartment. I made the choice to stay out in the rain, and I'm happy that I did.

When I got to my apartment, I peeled everything off and set it to dry, put on my big pink bathrobe, and made some tea. My headache was gone, I was fine, and it was a beautiful day.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'd imagine that the pre-storm barometric pressure might have contributed to the headache; heaven knows that I always feel better in my head after a good heavy downpour. It usually makes me welcome the rain.

You just brought back some memories so hard. And those memories always ended with drinking tea sitting in our housecoats,listening to the rain continue to poound down. I hadn't thought of that in a long time, so thanks.

I love downpours like that. When I was 10, my parents moved into a house across the street from a large athletic field. Watching the rain dance on that field from our front porch was one of the great joys of my adolescence.

Having grown up and spent a good chunk of my adult life on the Great Plains, I can tell you those barometric pressure headaches are *real*. The relief that comes with a good strong gullywasher almost makes them worth it, just for the sheer joy of feeling your head lifting, almost like it's filling with helium, as the front breaks over you and the lightning sparks and the thunder cracks and the rain comes down and down and down.

I've only ever lived in California. (The only time I've been in rain like that was, in fact, in Pennsylvania.) And what you're describing sounds as much like a miracle as anything I've heard lately. the scent of lakes and rivers suspended around me, swimming with both feet on the ground is a gorgeous line.

I saw on the Weather Channel that the Northeast was going to be getting some big downpours -- so I guess this is what it was like on the ground ;)

I grew up in Florida and in the summer we had rain every afternoon, usually heavy but generally over within an hour. I remember I once worked with someone who grew up in Baltimore and he said he'd never experienced rain the way he did in the South -- the utter, blinding, downpour. He walked home one day and said he was utterly soaked by the time he got there. I remember when my hair was longer and I got caught in one it was like I had my own personal waterfall.