for the love of rain

a story from the east coast

Tuesday. It’s so hot.

The trees seem to be shrinking.

A thick haze sits over the land. The grass has dried out and the landscape is a uniform sandy brown. King parrots have started hiding underneath the house. I leave water out for them. I cant remember the last time it rained.

It only seems like yesterday the house was freezing and I was going to bed in a beanie and two jumpers. Now the overhead fan whirls and blows hot air around and I can feel the sweat forming on my forehead and under my arms. Even the cats are still. Raven spends all day curled up on the cane chair, the coolest place in the house.

Thursday. I can smell the rain. I’m standing outside willing the clouds to deepen and darken. I feel a couple of drops on my arm. I close my eyes and pray. I feel the lack of rain in every cell. I see it in every piece of scorched grass and every dying palm. Even the rainforest is drying up. Our water tanks ran out a couple of weeks ago. For a few days we had no water at the house. We showered at the studio and bought big containers of water from the supermarket. I kept forgetting and going to turn the tap on. its so simple really. It doesn’t rain. There’s no water. For years I was so disconnected from this simple truth because I could always turn on the tap and drink or splash my face or have a bath.

We rang the water company and bought half a tank for $300. After a few days the water truck came trundling down the steep driveway. You’re lucky, they said. There’s a big wait on water at the moment. Everyones tanks are running dry. I wonder where it all comes from and what happens when that runs out.

Thursday.

The sound of the rain on the roof is getting stronger. It’s the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard. I will it to continue but of course, these things are not in any of our hands and very soon it stops and the sky is back to azure and the ground looks as thirsty as ever.

~

I spent my childhood holidaying in Wales with my Mum, Dad and brother in musty youth hostels and tiny tents. It would rain constantly. We would spend our days huddled inside playing Pictionary and never-ending games of Monopoly where I’d insist on being the banker and sometimes cheat and then feel sick with guilt.

It’s meant to clear tomorrow my Mum would say ever the optimist. My Dad would raise his eyebrows and go back to his newspaper. We would go to the beach anyway and sit on the pebbles shivering in towels, putting on a brave face in the freezing wind. It blows my mind that I can now drive for a few minutes to South Durras and have multiple white sand beaches to choose from, all deserted, all take your breathe away stunning.  I look at Kane and his friends, the kids who grow up here. Even Rod who’s lived here for 45 years. Imagine knowing this your whole life. Imagine knowing this kind of beauty existed. Once you’ve been here, in terms of beaches, nothing really comes close.

Still I miss the rain.

~

I always loved the sun. Even when I was a little girl. I always dreamed of living somewhere like this.  I loved how the sun turned my skin brown instantly. I loved the warmth. On the rare sunny days in England I’d laze around on the grass and read novel after novel, with a constant refill of ice water and homemade ice pops. I’ve never been afraid of relaxing. I think I get it from my Mum. My brother and my Dad are doers. Are you going to stay there all day they’d ask, turning their noses up. There’s some weeding to be done, and trees to be pollarded.

My parents had friends in Italy and we’d go to visit them in Perugia and have a few days in Rimini on the way back. Rimini is Italian beach tourist heaven. After an hour on the sun loungers they’d get bored and my Dad would write out complicated maths equations and convince us to work them out. Once during a Solar Eclipse he created a contraption out of a coke can and a mirror so we could watch the moon shadow turn the world black  without burning our retinas. I remember crowds of Italian tourists gathering round. I felt proud and embarrassed all at once.

Italy was magic to me. As soon as I turned 15 I started falling in love with every Italian boy I met and would sneak out of the hotel at night and go dancing by myself, with no money and not a word of Italian. Somehow I always landed on my feet. The Italian boys I met were respectful and kind, despite their bravado cat calling me on the streets. My Mum and Dad would come out looking for me and collect me from beaches, pulling me away from the most recent love of my life saying firmly in Italian she’s only 15. That was the last time they took me to Italy. I remember coming home to England and a wet summer would turn into a grey autumn and school and freezing winter with no daylight and that would be it. I never thought I’d long for the rain but now it’s all I can think about. I daydream about days of solid rain, filling the tanks and washing the dust from every leaf. But Mother Nature works on her own time. The cycles of the earth have been turning forever. Who am I, in my infancy to think I know.

~

It rains in Wales.

I met my friend Rachel in a grubby hostel room in Byron Bay circa 2011. We very quickly became inseparable, moved in to a ramshackle house on Johnson Street with holes in the walls and 10 other housemates, rode our bikes around town drinking tequila at 8 in the morning and talking about boys constantly. We spent the best part of 2 years together, eventually leaving Byron with big plans to travel around Australia in a little Mitsubishi Magna (she did just that, I fell in love and stayed in Woolgoolga 2 hours down the coast which is a repeating story in my life). She’s one of the only old friends I’ve stayed in touch with. She’s been back in England for over a decade and I’d always visit her on trips home. So when I got an excited call last year announcing the proposal followed by a wedding invitation to a 3 day camping wedding in North Wales I said yes absolutely yes. Even though I’d been over the year before. Even though we only had a tiny amount of time. It was always yes. Rod and I took the mammoth trip to this tiny green island surrounded by clouds to celebrate her love.

Wales in August. Of course it rained.

She’d hired out a youth hostel, a beautiful old house with huge rooms laid with parquet floors perfect for dancing. We drove to North Wales through towns called Mold & Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, on tiny roads straight out of fern gully the remake.

‘it’s so green’ we say over and over again. The shades of emerald are dazzling but we can hardly see them through the thick drizzle.  This is what happens when it rains all the time. The sky is black and it doesn’t show any sign of clearing. As we arrive I see her climbing out of her tent in a full length silver sequinned dress with blonde curls bouncing. She hasn’t changed in at all in 12 years. Her and Max’s van, the green goddess, is festooned with flowers and full of 3 days worth of food and drink for 60 guests, along with all the entertainment including half a brass band.

This must have taken so long to organise! I say, Oh yeah. It’s not that hard really, she says ever positive.

On the morning of the wedding the rain was heavier than ever. I saw a tiny shadow pass across her face but then all her best friends came out with Mimosas and we went swimming in the freezing and surprisingly fast running river. One by one the guests would almost get swept downstream to screams of laughter. By 10am the rain had stopped and half an hour later we were all drinking champagne under blue skies.

I dont really have any point or conclusion to this rambling story, I’m just so grateful you’re here. I suppose what I’m trying to say is, rain on a wedding day is seen as a ‘bad’ thing, rain when the tanks are empty, a ‘good thing’. We are seeing everything through our own lens and our own agenda. But really who are we to say how things will work out or not. I’ve been studying the Bhagavad Gita with Karina and the constant message is ‘do your work’. ‘Do it full out’. ’Dont get attached to how it will be received, or any notions of ‘success’’. ‘Surrender it all to god’.

That’s my continual practice. to surrender it all. The rain, the lack of rain, the quiet or busy studio, the accolades, the criticism, my own attachment to what is ‘good’, it’s none of my business. It’s not about me. It’s not my right to control how things will work out. All I need to do is pay attention and see.

Everything is connected. Everything is changing.

And so it goes.