elizabethlevett

Sure, they have rain here.

But it’s not the same.

Funny, there’s only one word for it anywhere you go.

Rain here is not like what we had in the south.

You call this rain?

They tell you it’s supposed to rain and you could wait around all day.

Seems like just a drizzle when it does come.

And then it only ever shows up in the winter!

Back in Georgia on a summer day

the sun would come up brazen as anything

and the day would start right off sweltering.

It gets so hot you could leave your flip-flops stuck in the tar behind you

if you happened to walk on a street that was newly paved.

Gets so humid you feel all sweaty just going upstairs to change the linens.

Hell.

Then just about the time when lunch was all cleared away

and things would start to get sleepy

and staying indoors wasn’t any better,

just about the middle of the afternoon

a big old grey cloud would show up over the rooftops and start to fill up the sky.

You’d hear the first crack of thunder and boy, everybody’d get out of the pool.

Even the teenagers would stop admiring their flat bellies and run inside.

And drops so big they hit the ground like the slap of a jump rope on the blacktop.

Before long the gutters would fill up and the creeks would swell.

If you were out driving in a car, you couldn’t see the ground ahead –

just a thick grey scrim over everything.

The red clay would get all over everything and just try to get it out.

Nope. It’s not like what they have out here.

Rain in the south is something else altogether.