Wednesday, April 21, 2010

How it rained

I remember Germany / how it rained. We emailed about sunflowers.

It rained / we made rice pudding for lunch, Milchreis, and ate it hot, pouring cherries in their syrup onto it to keep from burning our tongues.

Days of heat and stifling humidity, one after the other until nothing could bear it any longer. I rolled up my shirt to let my sweating stomach breathe in the free bicycle breeze. Just coming back from a walking errand you would climb in the shower first thing. So it would build up and build up, cold chamomile with three meals a day, and then the sky would crack open and bring downpour, bring us running upstairs to shut the windows and out onto the terrace to rescue the cushions, bring us relief from the Schnaken and the weight of every particle of water between us and that sky.

Later, maybe the storm is over. Maybe there are still raindrops on my window up there in the sloping roof, or maybe I go to bed with the sound of sky still every now and again like God's ripping fabric, still the falling water, and Mona calls to me Erschreck dich nicht meaning in the night when the thunder wakes you, don't frighten yourself — don't be frightened — and then to her own bed, then all of us in darkness.

14 comments:

  1. Danielle - Thank you. :) My memories are especially vivid lately now that I am pondering when I will return.

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  2. Are you returning more to your interests in German(y) now?

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  3. Danielle - Oh, I never stopped loving German. There's nothing like it and it's unnatural how natural it feels to me. I don't really like the literature focus of the major, but the language? Wish I had more of it in my life at present.

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  4. "God's ripping fabric." man, this whole thing is terrific writing.

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  5. Erin - Oh Erin, thank you so. I wasn't/am not sure if divine metaphors are overdone in regards to thunderstorms, but it kinda worked for me.

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  6. I have to agree with Erin, that line made me giggle delightedly because it's so exactly what thunderstorms sound like and I never could quite put my finger on what it was.

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  7. Mixedblessings89 - Then it's working! For it is so, so vivid in my mind...thanks, Aditi.

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  8. Oh. This is so evocative. And your descriptions, the heat and the rain, they sound like the summer where I live.

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  9. Jenica - Thank you :) The closest I get to that kind of summer is when I return to school in August here in the Midwest. I do love the crazy rainstorms, wimpy as I may be when it comes to dealing with humid heat...

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  10. This is fantastic. This is why I think you are a genius.

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