"The Trees Love This Weather"

While walking out to the chicken coop this morning, I was suddenly enveloped in a very vivid memory from my early childhood. I was standing in the driveway, listening to the cool breeze, the faint sound of rain dripping, and the birds chirping. I was smelling the damp earth, damp leaves, damp concrete.

Slowly, like a fog swallowing up the present, I became very small again. Straining to look up at my mom, I realize I am holding her hand and trying to see through my fuzzy hair pushed around my face by a wind breaker hood. I can hear the soft sound of the nylon (or whatever it was made of) swishing around my ears with our movement. We're walking along a quiet, wet street while cool, misty rain drizzles all around us. I smell damp earth, damp leaves, damp concrete. I hear the breeze through the lingering fall leaves in the trees, the rain dripping, the birds chirping. My mom is taking deep breaths, smiling. Then she says, "The trees love this weather." I remember wondering how she knew that, but I remember never doubting for a minute that it was true- of course the trees must love this weather. Clearly she did; she seemed so content to be walking out in it- out in the weather that was keeping every other person shut up in their houses.

Then the past swallowed that moment up again and I was back, standing in my own driveway, surrounded by dripping trees and chirping birds and solitude. What a peaceful, nostalgic, and strangely lonely feeling... to remember something so brightly and in the next moment realize how far away that moment really is, and how much has changed since then.

But I do believe that when this weather rolls in my mom is still just as happy to greet it... and I also believe the trees are still just as in love with it as she is... and thanks to her, this just so happens to be my favorite kind of weather, too.