In the Philippines, the season of rain starts just as the school year begins. A new grade, a new teacher and old chums—all are met with new uniforms and new shoes that have been soaked, splashed from buses running across puddles that often rise into ankle deep pools. When the first drops of rain fall across Manila in June, thin arcs of colors pop up between breaks in the clouds. Everyone sighs from the cooling relief—a balm against the roasting heat of the temperatures of the summer. However, as months roll into each other, so do the waves of storms that crash into the city. There are neither breakers nor ‘brellas strong enough to withstand the endless onslaught. Waters rise in neighborhoods and along major thoroughfares, so that vehicles become islands of steel, and the plastic palm trees atop jeepneys bend and sway with the winds.
I used to love to take naps when the rains hit. In Quezon City, where I lived during my grade school years, we had a one-level home filled with windows that gifted us with constant light and a view of rice fields beyond the chain link fence that marked the boundary of our housing development. My younger brother, Paolo, and I shared a room and a big bed that was flushed against the wall of windows. When the rainy season hit, I loved to open the horizontal glass shutters inside the iron grills. The water would mist me through the screen, where a few geckos remained still as they bathed in the coolness. Often, there would be no electricity during a storm, and so we spent afternoons reading or napping—for hours at a time. My red bicycle remained untouched in the covered driveway.
The staccato rhythm played on our roof made it difficult for my brother and me to awaken in the afternoons. Nevertheless, mom always tried, especially when the rain was at its heaviest.
“Li, Pao,” she would shake and shove us. Minantika, she would describe our kind of deep slumber. It was Surigaonon, her native dialect. Our sleep was thick as oil, she had said. “Wake up, guys. Wake up.”
“Why, Mommy?” I would groan out. My brother Paolo used to sleep like my Sebastian does now: on his back with his arms bent on either side of his face, palms opened upwards, and legs spread open.
“It’s time to play in the rain.”
I would sit upright and see how the world outside my window had turned into layers of crystal and silver. The mist would continue to blow in and settled like dewdrops on my shins.
“Paolo,” I’d bend down to his ear and shout, “Time…to…wake…up!”
My little brother would curl up on his side, his left arm flailing out. “No!”
I’d lie on my stomach, my head near his. My fingers would pry open an eyelid. “Helloooooo.”
“Stop it. Go away.”
“Mom said, we could go outside.”
He would open both eyes and smiled up at us. “Let’s go, go, go!”
We’d scramble off the bed and run to the front door. Always, we would stop and look back at mom. She would shoo us out with the backward wave of her two hands.
I would look down at Paolo, 3 years my junior, and say, “Ready? Come on. Let me teach you how to play in the rain.”
1. Do not walk. Run into the rain.
When I first learned to swim, I was seven years old. On the first day of classes, down at the shallow end of the pool, the teacher asked us to come into the water. Mom was behind me, in the shade. We slowly inched to the edge of the pool. Some sat down and then slid into the water. Others climbed down the ladder. A few trembled after having dipped their toes in.
Before class, Mom had said, “Just jump in. It will be cold. You just have to do it.”
On the first day of lessons, I looked back at mom. Then, I jumped.
When Paolo and I first played during a heavy monsoon storm, I thought about my mom’s words. My grandmothers would have admonished us for getting wet and possibly catching a cold. However, mom never believed in that myth. She was more worried about us missing out on an experience.
I grabbed my brother’s hand and instructed, “Do not walk. Run into the rain.”
Without waiting for him to protest, I pushed the screen door open with my left hand and yanked Paolo outside. We both laughed as the water—so warm and so plenty—drowned the world outside. Paolo and I ran to the end of the driveway, line by red and violet African daisies that had bowed down to the insistent pressure from the conquering rains. It was like playing in an upside down swimming pool. We were the only two kids outside in our neighborhood, and we felt like thundergods on earth.
2. Open your mouth and taste. Open your eyes and see.
The winter of my first year of college—in Montreal, Canada—was a lonely one. There was no gradual descent into stark coldness. By November, there was always at least a foot of snow on the ground—usually above a layer of black ice—and the temperatures never again reached 0 degrees Celsius until April. I wanted to go home—to the familiar. What was I even doing in Canada, I wondered to myself as I trudged through drifts and slid on hidden slick patches to class. I cursed as my breath, trapped by a wool scarf wound tightly around my nose and mouth, escaped but then froze on my eyelashes, anchoring them shut. This was not the experience about which I had fantasized—the one shook me from the comfort of my family.
When I went home for the holidays, winter followed me to the Washington, DC area. My family and I had moved there in 1985. We lived on a home, situated on the crest of its own hill. I cried the minute I arrived back on our doorstep. Don’t make me leave, please, I thought. Instead of voicing my despair, I affected a cool that college students wore like a mantle of pride.
That break, my youngest brother, Niccolo, who was 12 years younger than I, never left my side. He often snuck into my bedroom at night to cuddle with me. He would sleep with his arms grasping mine. My son Sebastian sleeps the same way, tucked into my warmth and clutching me to prevent me from leaving.
After the first snowfall that winter in Virginia, I woke Niccolo up early. “We’re going sledding.”
He scrambled out of bed, and I dressed him in warm layers. Niccolo’s grin was as wide and as a white as the world outside. Although it was neither as windy nor as cold, the scene that met us when we opened the front door could have been Montreal.
Niccolo shut the door and sat on the front step. “But, Li, we don’t have sleds.”
“No, you’re right. But I bet we can find something just as good.” A few minutes later we were sledding down hill on the metal covers of our garbage cans. The tricky thing about sledding down our hill is to avoid plowing into the street. So we aimed for the snow banks piled high by street cleaners. We landed on our bellies, with our faces in the snow.
“It’s so pretty outside,” I told Niccolo as we made snow angels.
“Nooooo. It’s all white.”
“Open your eyes and see the world, Nicky.” I pointed to the colorless textures around us—from the candied icicles that hung from our roof to the icy webs that encrusted tree branches to the untouched areas of snow.
Niccolo wasn’t paying any attention to the splendor around him. He was six. He put a chunk of ice in his mouth, instead.
“Do you want to taste something neat?”
He nodded his head. I ran to the house and brought back a bottle of maple syrup. I swirled amber colored ribbons on the snow.
“We’re making candy.”
“Yup. Open your mouth and taste.” We sat there for a while until our bottoms were cold and wet.
I went back to Montreal after a couple of weeks at home—with renewed vigor. I still missed my family, but I had also missed a lot when I had focused on seeing the wintry landscape of the French Canadian city as bleak instead of seeing its splendor. When I returned North, it was January, and the temperatures had dipped to – 30 degrees Celsius. But playing with Niccolo back in Virginia had opened my eyes, mouth and mind to experiencing Montreal and its winter.
3. Splash. Splash. Splash.
The first time Paolo and I played in the rain we jumped into puddles. The goal was to make the biggest splash. We pretended to be dolphins arching out of the sea and breaking its surface on the dive back down into its depths. We ran across the lawn looking for pools of water in which to jump. We avoided the canals that were already overflowing. Paolo and I opened our mouths up to the sky and drank in the water. What we tasted was purity. After thirty minutes of playing in the rain, Mom called us back in and welcomed us with dry towels and hot ginataan, a sweet stew made with coconut milk, taro, camote, sago, bananas and jackfuit.
This past summer, Sebastian and I spent a lot of time at the pool. The first time we jumped in together, he cried in fear. He clung to my neck and shivered in my arms. I waded with him to the middle of the pool.
“Nooooo, mommy, it’s scary!”
“Why is it scary?”
“Coz…” He could not articulate his fear. As a parent, it is difficult to not want to hug him and get him out of the pool quickly. But I knew if I did, he would miss out on the joy of swimming. So I splashed him instead — like bath time. ”No splashing mommy!”
He was laughing as he found a way to untangle his arms. Clad in a safety jacket and arm floaties, he bobbed up and down in the water, by himself. Then, he splashed me, first with his arms and then by kicking his feet. When he realized how far away he was from me, he yelled, “I swimming, Mommy, I swimming.”
4. Twirl your umbrella. Spin it fast.
When my son Sebastian was born four weeks early, he was a little under five pounds. He stayed in the neo-natal intensive care unit for six days. While he was growing and glowing under the bilirubin lights that helped erase his jaundice, his uncles, Paolo and Niccolo, visited him. They promised they would expose him to fun and laughter and light. I wondered if they would they take him out in the rain? Would they sled with him in the snow? Would they splash with him across puddles or in the pool? I knew instinctively that they would. For now, it was my turn again to play with Sebastian in the rain.
It has been raining continuously throughout the East Coast. While most have been bemoaning the weather, Sebastian and I have enjoyed it. One reason I love the rain is my chance to take an umbrella out of my collection. In a city, where the uniform is the small, black Tote, my umbrellas are bright and colorful. For example, this week, I’ve been sporting my periwinkle one covered in butterflies. On my way to and from work, I twirl it so that rain bounces off in different direction. Instead of Gene Kelly, Garbage’s “I’m only happy when it rains” skips through my mind.
Sebastian, too, has an umbrella. The design is a bumble bee—yellow and black striped. Everyday, for the past week, he grabs his and mine from the front closet before we head out to meet the morning rain. He, too, has mastered the art of twirling the umbrella. Occasionally, he will let his dip in order to catch the rain with his mouth.
“I like the rain mommy! I like the rain!”
What a difference a few months make. He used to be afraid of thunderstorms, or bam-booms. While he still shies away, when the clouds rumble, the rain has been welcomed. If we are not outside playing in the October rain, Sebastian and I watch it from our balcony. We are the thundergods.
Last Thursday evening, we sat on stools surrounded by my garden. “Look, mommy, the tomatoes are wet! The leaves are taking [a] bath!” He ran over to shake the water from the plants.
“Mommy, can I play outside? in rain?”
“Sebastian, it’s getting dark. But tomorrow, we will be in New Jersey. Tomorrow, we play.”
An island of sun appeared this past weekend, when Sebastian and I joined our friends in Edgewater, New Jersey. On Sunday, our hosts—and their two boys around Sebastian’s age—took us to a park. There were large puddles everywhere. Sebastian, tired of the swings, slides and jungle gyms, ran ahead of me.
“Stop! Sebastian! Stop!”
My son froze right as before he approached the largest pool of water. “I splash, Mommy!”
Before I could say no, he turned back and jumped into and then across the water. And then he ran back through it. Other parents held their children back from following his example. After all, the muddy puddle had soaked his socks and the hem of his pants through. The other parents shook their heads in disapproval.
Instead of groaning, I laughed and swung my son into the air. He too screamed–just as Paolo had done the first time we played in the rain or as Niccolo did when he slid down a hill and crashed into a snow bank.
“I splash again, Mommy?”
This time I shook my head. I ruffled his hair and took him to the carousel.
Sebastian looked at the sky. “Mommy, where [is] the rain?”
“It’s coming back.”
“Yea!” To hear his glee reminded me of the days I played with my brothers—in the rain and in the snow.
Recent Comments