Springs are full of rain-this one especially.  Rain will stop a picnic and it will ruin a clean floor. Rain makes a clothesline useless and it makes shoes muddy. Treehouses are empty and swings are still when the world is full of rain.

I remember the rain in my childhood.  The men worked on tractors under tin roofed shelters when it rained . The shelters were dark and dirty.  I couldn’t even tell them dinner was ready without getting some sort of stain on my clothes-or worse, disturbing the sacred order of their tools.  A bolt was sure to go missing in the brief moment I entered and they acted like it was the last one in the world.  If the dogs followed me in, and they always did, then the men took to hollering about that too.  I was always so glad to get back in the house with mama and grandmama, even with the stain on my perfectly good clothes.  

The little farmhouse was the place to be when it rained.  The women knew what to do with rain and children. There was a wooden chest full of yesterdays’ trends for my sister and I to dress up in. There were pocketbooks with Avon lipstick samples.  There were shoes with heels and there were sheer scarves.  We played for hours in the “front bedroom”.  We had dolls that looked like babies-almost.  The dolls got sick and had birthdays too. They got scared and needed their mamas.  Sometimes they were naughty, but we loved those dolls and took our mothering seriously.  

When the dolls napped, my sister and I went dancing. There was a record player and  quite a grand selection of records by Hank Williams ,Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn. We had to dance carefully or the record would skip.  

Grandmama had a “button box” that we could play with, if it rained.  There were hundreds of buttons in it.  We always sorted them out, which took a good long while.  It was quiet work, so the dolls kept napping.  They never woke up til we finished.  I understand what “cute as a button” means because of that button box and a rainy day.  The buttons looked like pearls,roses and crystals.  Some had pictures painted on them. Mama still has that box of buttons.

Often, the smell of a cake filled the house up, even if it was the middle of the week. . . if it was raining .  This sent my sister and I tossing the neat piles of buttons carelessly back to the box they lived in.  We never got a piece of cake before supper, but we still went to the kitchen, just in case.

So the rain did not mean a gloomy day when I was a child and it does not do so now either. I simply can not complain about rain . All is well at the rabbit patch- and a cake is in the oven.  I see the lights on early in the homes of my kind neighbors and it cheers me thinking they are all there safe and sound.  

Rest assured that I love sunshine and it will be a welcome sight when it falls on the rabbit patch- you can also rest assured that  I will wait  for it with a grateful heart, for  I remember rain and  I know what to do with it.