Summer Rain

A wet day in the dry season has me stirring

I can’t remember the last time it rained an entire day, mid-summer.

I’m sure it has before. It’s not like the sun has a complete monopoly during dry season. But Philippine summers are typically long spells of magma-hot radiation that wilts the grass and causes spontaneous combustion in small animals. Last Tuesday’s rain was a bizarre interruption.

Of course, the night it rains is the exact night I decide to leave some nearly-dry laundry out in the open garage.

Because why would it rain? It’s been 40-degree weather all week. We’re in April for crying out loud. People are on holiday getting sunburn as we speak. Rain is not for another two months, in June, the official start of the wet season. 

So I leave our shirts and pants and pillowcases hanging outside. At around 2:30AM, I wake to the rain. I instantly realize the laundry is doomed and mutter, “Oh no”. 

I stay in bed, of course, because the AC is blowing freezing air and the rain makes me curl deeper beneath the blankets. Wet laundry? Too bad, I guess.

The pelting on the roof is matched by a sudden banging on my bedroom door. My son, no doubt halfway through some video game adventure, is asking for help. He’s got laundry in the backyard. I’m wide awake now, and the missus is stirring too. Which means I have to get up and salvage our clothes before everything is soaked. What a kill joy. 

We pull everything in before the rain is a complete deluge, thank goodness. I go back to bed, lulled to sleep by tin roof pitter patter. 

It occurs to me over breakfast that not only did I leave the laundry out that night, but also the living room rug. Not because I had washed it but because my wife and I were fed up with it being a dust magnet. 

I had placed it in the open garage, the same area I put our laundry. Rolled and propped up against the wall where it sagged a little, as if concealing a goodfellas whack job.

Well, the rug got soaked.

I think it’s hilarious and ironic. Not Alanis Morissette-worthy, but an interesting turn of events all the same. A gentle reminder that life is always unpredictable. 

I can imagine Jordan Peterson making this an object lesson. Like, if you just get out of bed and deal with stuff instead of ignoring it, even when you don’t feel like it - especially if you don’t feel like it - all will be well (just don’t forget the proverbial rug).