#1,127 Home in the Rain.

I’ve covered this a few times before on this blog. How I love being at home in a storm. Particularly, I love long gray days that threaten rain, then when it finally comes it changes the way home feels.

It’s been raining here for what feels like months now. Days on end of heavy, drenching rains have left our yard more like a pond. The dogs are stranded in the workshop, their only dry island. They’ve been asleep in there for about 3 days straight now, aside from the few minutes they’ve spent boringly pacing the porch hoping it will stop if they get close enough.

Today was a little different. The rain held off long enough for us to go to church and come home from lunch. But before long, the sky became darker than felt natural and the rain came back 10 times heavier than before. I was lying on one couch, Ben on the other, watching Downton Abbey and drifting in and out of sleep. Every Saturday I clean all the floors in the house because to me, when my house is as clean as possible that’s when it’s most comforting and cozy. So today I was without responsibilities aside from keeping a cable knit blanket wrapped around me, and trying to stay awake as it became even darker outside in the middle of the afternoon. After 2 episodes, I couldn’t hold my eyes open anymore. We turned it off and Ben began to read a book in the lamplight.

The house was silent and insulated feeling. I could only hear rain, quiet thunder and the church bells playing hymns a block away when the hour struck. I’ve been using a home fragrance that I only use in the springtime, and the smell was all around me while I lay there listening to the muffled and wonderful sounds outside the window above me. The smell reminds me of sweet olive, walking to work, coming home to make a fresh vegetable supper, sunburned cheeks. I closed my eyes, reluctant to miss out on this, but thankful for rest.

I can’t understand why God blesses Ben and I so often and so generously. This house is more than we deserve, a safe and warm place that already feels like family even though it’s just an assemblage of wood, brick, glass. Black and white photos of our grandparents and great grandparents, young, laughing, riding bicycles, holding hands in the ocean, proudly displaying caught blue crabs on a faraway dock, posing with a giant watermelon, holding puppies that were long ago history, are everywhere in our house. On the bookshelves, on the walls, hanging beneath the dimly lit sconces, reminding us that life goes on and they’re still here, in us. Our pajamas live here, and our favorite thick socks, our coffee and our pillows and our cars that we named. The inexpensive rug we found on the floor of an antiques store in Roanoke, the books bought second hand, the cotton tote from Square Books. They all live here with us, punctuating our lives and our days.

You could say that I love being at home in the rain very very much.