We adapt to circumstances, paying raised prices for this precious resource, save water from washing our vegetables to feed the garden, stop washing our cars and drawing baths, take quick showers. Eventually, we forget what it's like to live without rain. We get used to days upon sunny days, tuck away our raincoats in the dead of winter, lose track of all our umbrellas.
In winter of 2015, our house at the foot of the hills got pelted by rebuff winds. The gangly trees in our garden snapped in two, and the orange and brown leaves of the persimmon tree were blown clean off in one night as the first of several storms roared through town. I woke up to the sound of hooting wind through the crevices around our house, to huge drops pelleting the resin roof of the the tool shed near our bedroom. The grounds became wet with washing, worms wriggling on the sidewalks to escape drowning in the mud.
On January 5, 2016, the day you were supposed to be induced, another big storm blew through. Droplets of rain hit our window with a ping-pinging sound as your father and I anxiously awaited the call from the hospital to come in. Your father joked you should bear the name "Stormborn" as we haven't seen such rains in years.
We often don't know what we are missing until it comes back to visit us, the way the heart forgets with absence, until it is reminded of a great necessity it used to have. The land has been thirsty for a long time, waiting and waiting for rain to drench its parched surface, much like how we've been eagerly waiting for you for a long time. I take walks every morning. With routine comes less acuity in the perception of your surroundings. Houses I pass all look alike, and the seasons blend together like an eternal summer. But this I will remember: the year you come to join us, it is also the year the rains came.
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