Watching the rain upside down

I went into my longest silent solo retreat almost six months ago. For awhile after, I thought about it so often it felt urgently near, still breathing. I’ve decided to let it fade a little now, trusting it to continue on without my tightly wound oversight. But there are still memories and sensations I come back to. There was one afternoon-turning-to-evening when I watched the rain upside down. I was so happy that it rained. It had snowed day and night, endless snow. I found the good in that, too, but for the temperature to rise just enough that the precipitation didn’t freeze was glorious and exciting. All change was interesting and welcome. Outside the front door of my cabin, a large round temperature gauge hung on the wooden slats. It had concentric circles of numbers, primarily indicating what kind of wax to use for skiing, but also to tell you if you could expect rain, slush, old snow, new snow. I was enormously grateful for it. How delightful it is to measure things, especially in analog form. I stuck my head outside, waiting for the temperature tick to move across the line into the rain section, hitherto untouched territory in my time there. When the water finally came, softly from the edge of the world, I laid across the end of my bed on my back, my head hanging slightly off the edge so I could see the whole sky upside down through the window. Growing up in Florida, rain was an anchor of reality. My bedroom walls faced outside, the wild backyard pressed against the glass. A landscape of green that, in the open sun, was almost neon, like the leaves of an artificial plant, but during a storm was just right—the water quieting, deepening the color. Sensitive, hushed, godlike green. I can hear and smell it still. Thunder and its fierce, bright partner, or sometimes just the patter of water. Summer heat breaking all at once. Outside the cabin upstate, the rain may have been cold, but it felt like a gift from a big hand in the sky. Like they were letting me be a child again for an afternoon. I watched it from inside the heart of time, looking out the window as my lives gathered to the very center, and somewhere, everything was soft and clean.