It rained for bits yesterday and today. Frankly, I wasn't sure what it was when the pitter patter began last night. There really isn't much rain here.

There was a light, fresh, cool breeze filling the living room through the slats of the windows. Almost as though gravity was being reduced in my vicinity. This street tends to be quiet most of the time, but the rain gave it a deserted sound.

Cars scatter when it rains because people don't have the experience of driving in it. So the sky was full of rain drops, and there was room between them -- it was as though the rain was creating a map of the world like the green text in The Matrix. So I sat and listened, enveloped in this sense of isolation and contentment. And that's when I remembered.

Memory is funny, you tend to notice what you miss more than what is around you constantly. And rain is rare enough now that I miss it. When I was little, my favorite rain was summer camp rain. Now, it did suck when it rained for several days in a row, but once or twice during the summer there would be a tropical storm. The clouds would circle, the sky darken, the temperature drop twenty degrees and the wind start moving through the trees and around the cabins.

We would sit in our bunks, reading books and comics, playing games, as large raindrops descended upon us. Bouncing off the cabin roofs, filling the garbage cans scattered among the grounds, hitting the equipment shack by the baseball field. And everything would be quiet but for the large drops making contact with us, for the quality of light changed. Moved us from the everyday to the in-between: a hazy, glazy, lazy time when we would enjoy peaceful, relaxed existence. Even the air tasted better during a tropical storm.

It was the quality of enjoying other people, quietly and slowly, pushed out of the impatient, rushing, volatile stream of daily life.

I miss that. But every once in a while it rains. And I remember.