Red Red Rainboots

I took a walk in the rain today.

That in itself is nothing spectacular:  this is Vancouver and it rains here a lot.  To avoid rain, one would have to stay inside from mid-September through April or May, and I’m unwilling to do that.  Luckily, most people here have a similar regard (or is it disregard?) for rain, and people can be seen out in it all the time.

I walked through the neighborhood I live in, enjoying the feel of the drops falling on my hooded head, and the quietness that rain brings.  Sure, people are out in it but from necessity, not joy.

I was walking in the rain for joy.

When I was five I had red rain boots.  They were a deep cherry red and boasted a single button at the top.  They may have been the type that go over the shoes, in which case they were really galoshes, but that seems an unwieldy word for the boots that gave me so much joy.

In those rain boots, I became huge.  Powerful.  I could step through puddles, no longer limited by walking around them.  I could even splash a little if no one was watching who might reprimand me for such frivolity.  I had freedom.  I could walk in that surreal wet world under my hooded raincoat and umbrella and forget the other things happening in my life, and just walk.  Rainy days became a magical world of escape.

In high school I took to walking around in the rain whenever I wanted to get out and think.  Walking through our neighborhood on a rainy Sunday afforded me more inner quiet than any other place I knew; everyone else was indoors and dry, enjoying blazing fireplaces and weekend TV football games while I haunted the wet streets, not caring how wet I became myself.

Just having the opportunity to walk again out in the rain seems rather huge right now.  Transformation is often measured in tiny moments.

I am so getting a pair of rain boots.  Red ones.