Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
There hasn’t been a torrential rainfall, in fact it hasn’t rained hard in weeks. But the weather has been cold and damp and yet again it’s drizzling this morning. May has felt as cold and wet as February usually does.
I set up the pool last weekend, and at this point I think it will be a solid month before it’s warm enough to get in. I wore a turtle neck to school on Friday, and I’ll be wearing layers again today. It’s cold.
Part of the price of living in the Vancouver Lower Mainland is that November and February suck… days of endless rain and low temperatures. But May is usually amazing. Sometimes we get to June and it cools down, but May is a month I usually always look forward to. Not this year.
In my 20’s I ran away from Toronto because I hated the winters. Now in my 50’s I’m wondering why I chose to live near a rainforest? I think being born on a tropical island and spending my first decade there spoiled me. I just want to see a bit of sunshine for more than a couple hours at a time… and I really hope I don’t have to wait until July to get it.
Guess I’ll just keep taking my vitamin D pills and bundling up. Summer will get here… eventually.
Today on highway 5 my daughter and I saw a plane drop fire retardant (red coloured) water on the hill closest to the highway. There were multiple spots along the closest ridge and hill to our right where we could see smouldering trees. Then we headed into a section of highway where we couldn’t distinguish smoke from fog, and a light misty rain covered our windshield.
We are used to rain in BC, but it has been much too dry and the fires have been out of control. Seeing one of the fires so close to the highway followed by raindrops made me realize how little control we m have over nature. Many fires in BC are not contained, they are forcing evacuations, and endangering lives. It’s one thing to deal with the inconvenience of smoke from a distant fire and yet another to face the flames.
With so many fires burning in BC, it’s a joy to see some rain, and I find myself hoping for much more of it.
A couple days ago I wrote this about a heavy 3am rainfall that woke me up:
“The sound took me back to my childhood. In Barbados we would have these short, intense rain showers. They seldom lasted more than 20 minutes and they came and left without warning. We had a galvanized roof and the sound of heavy rain hitting it was thunderous. But it was never scary. As loud and fierce as the rain sounded hitting corrugated metal above us, it was also a sound that was soothing, comforting.”
In a video chat my dad said he read it and said that it brought back memories for him too. My youngest daughter joined me on the phone and he asked if she had read it, she hadn’t. So he went on to ask if she knew the sound of rain on a galvanized roof. She didn’t know what that was. Then, like me, he went on to describe a corrugated metal roof. I said, she probably doesn’t know what that is either… she didn’t.
We have an aluminum roof on our current house, so a metal roof isn’t an unknown thing, but a loud, uninsulated, galvanized, corrugated metal roof is not something common to Canada. It is something a tropical islander would know all too well.
Here is a video sharing the sound of ‘heavy rain’ falling on a galvanized, corrugated metal roof:
While the video description says ‘heavy rain’, this sounds quite gentle. It’s a sound of a constant flow. Often as a kid, when the sound of rain on a roof woke me up during the night, it would be an intense and truly heavy rain attacking the roof that would wake me. It would settle to the sound in the video, but imagine a louder, more violent version of this thundering above as a passing storm went by.
It was interesting to realize that the experience I was describing could connect my dad to a shared experience, but the same description meant nothing to my daughter. It made me realize that I was sharing a contextual experience that not everyone has had. Furthermore, here in Vancouver, while it rains a lot, the rain just isn’t the same as in Barbados.
The Bajan rains come fast and are intense, and leave as quickly as they come. Here in Vancouver it can drizzle for hours. In Barbados when it rains you stay under cover because you know it will stop soon, and a 15 second walk from your car to inside would leave you drenched like you went into the shower with your clothes on. Here in Vancouver, it rains far more often and I never carry an umbrella. For most rainfalls here, I don’t even think about covering my head when I walk in the rain for a minute. Rain here is not rain everywhere.
I’m reminded of the Inuit having several terms for snow, while we just call it snow. And that some cultures can’t distinguish between blue and green, because they don’t have a term for blue, but they also see shades of green that we can’t distinguish or tell apart. Our contexts growing up shape us. And our experiences don’t always create a shared understanding. To me a corrugated, galvanized roof is a musical instrument played by rain, to others it is an unfamiliar sound.
At about 3am this morning I was awoken by the sound of torrential rain. It was bouncing off of our roof with such force that it seemed to be attacking it. It’s all at once a threatening and comforting sound. It makes me feel happy to be under warm covers, rather than outside being pelted by heavy, biting bullets of water.
The sound took me back to my childhood. In Barbados we would have these short, intense rain showers. They seldom lasted more than 20 minutes and they came and left without warning. We had a galvanized roof and the sound of heavy rain hitting it was thunderous. But it was never scary. As loud and fierce as the rain sounded hitting corrugated metal above us, it was also a sound that was soothing, comforting.
If the rain came as I was falling asleep, I would fight sleep just to be up and hear the chorus of raindrops drumming the roof. If it came while I slept, it would wake me from sheer loudness, yet I wouldn’t be able to stay awake long enough to hear the rain stop.
Last night was a reminder of these childhood memories. It is fascinating to me that such a violent sound could be so satisfying to listen to. Lying in bed, protected by the ceiling above, a torrential rain is a musical interlude rather than a scary interruption of sleep.
It is a reminder of my childhood, a sound that evokes fond memories of growing up on a tropical island… Of rainstorms pounding our roof. Of running into the ocean since the rain would soak us anyway. Of driving under a cloud and instantly needing maximum speed windshield wipers to be able to see ahead, then suddenly hearing the squeaking noise of the full speed wipers streaking across a dry windshield seconds after driving out from under the rain cloud. Rain falling like a memory, and a melody, evoking a sense of comfort, a feeling of being home.
I woke up before my alarm this morning to the sound of heavy rain. It’s actually a nice sound to wake up to, but it also is a reminder that we are heading into the dark and cold of winter. For those of you that don’t know, I spent almost 10 years growing up in Barbados.
When you live on a tropical island, not too far from the equator, every day gets close to 12 hours sunlight. The rainy season means an hour of heavy rain daily before its sunny again, and sometimes the sun is still shining during those rains. Also, it doesn’t get cold. Ever.
Now I’m living on the edge of a Canadian rain forest on the wet/west coast. I like it better than the chill of Toronto, where we first moved when we came to this country, but sometimes the rain gets to me. Sometimes the damp feels really cold. Sometimes I really miss the sun.
In Barbados the rain was a welcome reprieve from the heat, although sometimes it brought uncomfortable humidity. Here, it can bring a chill. It can come with dull skies that hide the location of the sun in the sky… for days on end. When the rain comes, it can sometimes feel like it’s not going to leave.
For this reason, I load up on vitamin D, I have a natural light lamp on my desk, and I start dressing in layers that includes pairs of long underwear (that I’ll start using soon). People think it’s funny that I wear long underwear from late October through April, but I get chilled easily and am more comfortable hot than cold.
The rains are here. The cold is coming. I have to psych myself up. I have to prepare myself for the short, wet, dark days. I know what lies ahead, and I have to keep my chin up, and keep the clouds outside from creeping in.
