When It Rains….

                           

When It Rains, It’s Stoneleigh

It was a lumbering house. Built of rock and mortar, and afterthoughts of post and beam, it sat on the side of the mountain at the edge of Pike National Forest within the bounds of the tiny town of Shawnee, Colorado. The wrap-around porch was screened in and held firewood boxes, porch swing, couch, and an 8 point elk trophy that was missing it’s left eye. The balcony, exposed to the elements, was our mother’s favorite hangout.  There she smoked cigarettes and drank wine in the evenings while gazing out to Fitzsimmon’s Lake and hearing the distant cries of the children, “Ollie, Ollie, oxen free;” the eldest boys called to the younger five the code that the game of hide-and-seek was over.

Sometimes, as a five-year-old girl, hiding from my siblings in the dark under a wild rose bush near the back entry stairs, where the only light available came from the glittering stars billions of miles away, with stories of the Fitzsimmon’s Lake monster, Monkey’s Paw and Vindow Viper echoing in my ears, I would need to pee. I was afraid of monsters. I was afraid of failing my team. I feared my eight older brothers and sister who counted on me to rescue them from the “jail” that was the balcony. Dedicated to survival, loyal to the team, I’d remain motionless and pee, in place, and become more anchored to the rose bush that hid me.  I had, then, become  visible by both my taffy white hair and my unpleasant odor.

But a wet pair of knickers isn’t why I am writing this evening.

This evening and for five months prior, we’ve been waiting for rain. It has been so dry in New Mexico that the bones of critters, on the perimeters of survival, are as brittle as those corpses unearthed in Clovis. The grass is shriveled, hollow. The air is Coptic Egypt. We are in an unprecedented drought. Truly, news reports have said that living, 4’ diameter trees, are drier than kiln dried lumber of equal size. Five major fires, one record breaking, burn across the state. Thousands of personnel actively work to suppress them.

But this moment, now, here, the rain has come. 

A moment of rain, a breath.                                                                                                                        

That is all.                                                                                                                                                    

Enough rain that tracks of dirt, not mud, follow my dogs into the house.

A glass of wine and a porch chair, the smell of petrichor in the air and my barking dog invite me home to Stoneleigh, to Shawnee, to the five-year-old-girl now scrubbed clean, sitting in the screened-in porch watching the storm move into the valley.

Then, pounding thunder shook the three story sprawling hunting lodge that had become our summer retreat. Bolts of lightning cracked open the sky five, six, seven streaks at at time, moving east, down the valley towards the lake, the town of Bailey and eventually to Denver. But distant Denver is a thought I’m throwing in 53 years later. Then, as a child, frozen to the bare porch boards, cheeks plastered to the screen, the smell of metal in my nose, hair standing on end, my thoughts were only for the crashing thunder, the lit-up sky, the possibility of the Fitzsimmon’s Lake Monster approaching from below.

CRACK!! The lightening hit the propane stove vent pipe and followed the metal thoroughfare down into the guts of the oven.

POP!! The “cabin” a home with three formidable fireplaces, a formal dining room, living room, billiard room, eat-in kitchen, pantry, hobby-room room, elegant bedrooms, French doors, Dutch doors, bay windows, leaded glass windows, alcoves, went dark and Mom pulled out the candles and oil lamps to light our way, up the wooden staircase to our beds.

Begging, pleading, bought us some time with the storm. Vigilant as it approached, the older siblings stood sentinel. Not allowed outside on the balcony for fear of the errant lightning strike, we remained on the porch at the screens or finding our way to the couch, fighting off sleep, curling into it’s embrace, we followed the storms across the sky.

Such a bedtime story, that, an unequalled lullaby. The distant crashes of thunder overwhelmed the tales of fear and somehow we awoke in the morning in our beds with the smell of coffee and pine needles hanging heavy in the air.

The sun has set now in New Mexico but the light hangs distant still, blue-gray on the horizon. My dogs lie out in the yellowed, broken grasses waiting, listening. I sit on my porch, sated. 

It isn’t Brigadoon. It isn’t Stoneleigh but it’s mine and it rains. 

Once again, it rains.