When I smell rain coming, or hear it falling on my roof, I feel happy deep inside.

It’s been like that since I can remember.

On the farm, lying in bed as a kid listening to it on the grass outside it made me smile.  “That’ll fix things”, I’d think.  The new green grass would be strong in my mind’s eye, and I couldn’t wait to see it.  “Dad’s crop will like this.”

Rain then renewed what was around me and what our farming family depended on.

Even now, six decades of being rained on later, rain restores me, translocated far off to the inner city.

It’s the promise of growth.  The affirmation that there is life ahead.  The pleasure to know that the trees I live with, which need more water than me, may have a drink, their needs may be met.

Underneath all that, I guess, is the sense that food will be grown, bellies can be filled.

There’s too much rain sometimes, of course.  After a dozen floods in 20 years my Dad sold his farm to try somewhere else.  I know about floods.

And now we’ve broken the weather whole billions of us across Earth are being rained out, flooded to death.  I know.

Still, rain makes me happy, even when there’s too much of it, like a drunk with her wine, like a river swollen with mud amok water, rain is ‘in me’ even when it can do me harm.  Rain is part of me.

Why is that?

That’s a good question, don’t you think, with yesterday’s winter solstice behind us and blessed as we are this day with the first extra minute of the new, briefly longer day of sunlight?

And the promise of yet another additional minute to the day tomorrow?

May the minutes be with us all,

Michael