A Day in the Rain (not a letter to Jade, but in order)

I was walking home today in the rain. By the time I went from the Admin to the Brink to the Funstitute I was soaked. Then from there to home, I deliberately walked through the puddles until my socks were squishing happily in my shoes. I avoided the clean sidewalks choosing instead to walk through the gutters where the water ran in tiny rivers. The leaves, rocks and pinecones made little waves. The water dripped from my hair, down my face and is now gently accumulating on my shoulders. I am, as they say, soaked to the skin.

As I walked through the puddles, listening to the splashing of the traffic, I remembered a bit of a poem. If my memory serves it’s from Robert Burns. It’s the last two lines of a stanza and it goes something like this:
Come, leave the fear and the rout
And be my love in the rain.
Thinking of the happiness I was experiencing at that moment, a happiness that wipes away all sorrows, disappointments and fears, leaving instead a kind of ne joy—a joy that can only be found by forgetting not only the past, but the future and living in a carefree Now—I decided that I must share that bit of poem with others.

I walked to Alex, Brian, and Jason’s house. I stood on the square of linoleum just inside the door and told Alex my bit of poem. He smiled at me, but thought I was insane as the rain dripping from me formed a little puddle on his floor.

But that was not enough of the rain for me. I dropped off my bag and walked to give some photos to Audra and Daniel. I noticed that as I walked slowly and deliberately, my head held up into the falling rain, others walked quickly with their heads down, hiding inside the hood of the coats. Others turned their umbrellas into the rain and blocked their view. No one was smiling but me.

Many of my peers tell me that my stories I write for class are “naïve and childlike”. Today I discovered that that is true. I discovered that I never want to change. I wanted to take a moment to tell you all that, soaking wet as I am, I am happy to know each of you, to call you each my Friend and to fell your love in the rain.