Remembering Rain

I'm racking my brain, trying to remember what rain is like.

Here in north central Texas, we're burning through our 33rd straight day of 100-plus degree days.  Our last measurable precipitation was in June.

And I got to thinking about the summer in New York City when we got our first thunderstorm after an unseasonably long dry spell.

You see, both "hot" and "dry" aren’t usual descriptions for New York City summers.  Sure, it gets hot, but it's rarely dry.  Usually, sprawling as it does alongside an ocean, the region's humidity cloaks everything like a sticky, soggy blanket, while Gotham's fetid air, seemingly torched by all its concrete and glass, punishes every move with drenching heat that can suck away your breath.  The shrill winds that bitterly surge through those skyscraper-lined canyons in wintertimes seem to go on vacation every summer.

And that particular summer was both hot and atypically dry, dry, dry.

Rain isn't always welcome in the City, especially if you’re a subway commuter.  Draining rainwater pours through cracks and patchwork asphalt down to the aging tunnels below, where waiting passengers sometimes open their umbrellas - yes, underground - as dirty runoff sprinkles from overhead.

Not that even above ground, you can keep clean in a New York rainstorm.  Standing by a curb, you're bound to be splashed with oily water as cabs and buses charge past next to the sidewalk.  Standing water around clogged drains can create miniature lakes across crosswalks through which pedestrians must wade.

Yet that summer, as weeks went by without rain, those problems melted away in the relentless heat.  Layers of dusty grime eventually coated just about everything.  In Midtown, the maintenance departments for many corporate office towers break out high-pressure water hoses every summer evening, after rush hour, washing down not just sidewalks but also the first-floor walls of granite and glass skyscrapers, trying to keep things looking relatively clean and odor-free.  At least overnight.  But the entire city desperately needed that treatment; a good washing-down.

So as usually happens in New York’s predictable unpredictability, the first rain in a long time came during an afternoon rush hour.  At just the right time, as commuters who that morning had dressed for work with leather shoes, silk blouses, and hand-made silk ties - all completely inappropriate for exposure to rain - were leaving their office buildings, heading back home.

Yet here we were, walking on the newly-slick sidewalks to subway stations, bus stops, to our apartments, to our reserved black cars, double-parked with windshield wipers squeaking from lack of recent use:  All getting wet.

If this was just another thunderstorm, and this was just another day of rain after many other days of rain - meaning the rain was not special or particularly novel - the wetness would have been greeted with disdain, a sea of umbrellas, and soggy sneakers as pedestrians dodged puddles (with expensive shoes in bags or briefcases - these were the days before most New Yorkers used backpacks).

But as I walked home from the 6 Train's 28th Street subway station, rushing under my umbrella (which had been stored in my briefcase, perhaps more optimistically than pragmatically that summer), and jumping over puddles, I noticed a curious phenomenon.

Most people were walking briskly, yes, as is normal for New York; but not in an agitated manner, like pedestrians usually do when it's raining.  People were not treating the rain as their enemy.  They didn't hustle along with their shoulders hunched, squinting as if doing so helped keep the rain off their eyebrows.  Puddles weren’t obstacles or destroyers of leather shoes.  Even more incredibly:  Umbrellas were neatly folded.  Drenched hair was dripping over faces and ears, but not to the consternation of their wearers.

And yes, some people were actually STROLLING!  New Yorkers don't stroll.  Sometimes - much to the frustration of hardened, harried New Yorkers - tourists stroll.  But my neighborhood was not a tourist haven.

It suddenly hit me:  People were enjoying the rain!

So I closed up my wet umbrella and carried it, letting the rain pelt my carefully-combed head of hair (that was back when I had a lot of it, and I kept it neatly feathered under a thick coat of hairspray).  For maybe the first time in my adult life, I realized how rain could be truly refreshing.  And I walked along, my starched dress shirt first speckled with wet spots, then soaked.  My necktie became a soppy strip of silk dangling from my throat.

Granted, Manhattan has no Elysian fields of grass or hay whose idyllic, seasonal aromas can be unlocked by a nice rain (Central Park?  Fuggheddaboudit... not enough grass for too many lazy pet owners).  Still, the bouquet of that rain, that day, held an urban sweetness and a promise of freshness as trees were rinsed, sidewalks were scrubbed, and building facades were doused.

And we walked home, we relieved urban dwellers, reveling in the wetness.

Stylized hair can be washed, shirts can be laundered, and there are plenty of neckties in the city.  Those are prices we willingly paid for the beauty of rain after a long, hot, dry spell.  And leather shoes never last long anyway, not in a city with concrete sidewalks.

When people talk about appreciating simple pleasures, even a rainy rush hour can be one of them.

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