The Sound of Rain Starting to Fall

I'm sitting at my desk thinking about all the deadlines coming up. Today is the 18th and tomorrow the financial report is due for the eight o'clock meeting. It's already six p.m. and I still don't have the figures from accounting in California. "Guess this will be an all nighter," I mutter to myself. Everyone else is gone, the only light left on is mine and it is November dark outside – depressing. Thursday afternoon I have a meeting scheduled with the attorneys; something about intellectual property infringement – that sounds foreboding. I go back to work on the power-point presentation leaving space for the missing information. The computers were down for part of the day but are back on-line now. Hopefully, that email will be sent soon.

Just then I hear a sound at the window. Pink! Then again. Pink! Pink! It is the sound of rain starting to fall. Rain at night is such a peaceful sound. I remember when I was a girl the sound of rain hitting the window by my bed. In the spring I would open the window and take a deep breath, you can smell the earth with the first warm spring rain.

I thought about that one summer rain when I was in New York, it came down so hard and so fast that I ducked into a coffee shop. I got a window seat, a cup of coffee and some fresh apple pie to help wait out the storm. New York was so beautiful that day, shiny and clean from the recent wash.

Then there was that hot, dry summer of 1980 in Dallas when it was over 100 degrees every day for forty-two days. In August it finally rained and broke the heat wave. I ran out of the building for that rain, looked up into the sky with hands upturned, and I smiled as the rain wet my face.

Rain, such a nice word, saying it is like exhaling. It relaxes me when I concentrate on just the sound; rain falling on a tin roof, rain splattering on leaves, the windshield wiper whisking away the rain while driving in the car. I like hearing when I go under an overpass and the sound of rain ceases, then begins again as I pass through.

Once when it rained ... Ding! Oh! Finally, the email is here. Back to work.