We got rain this weekend, over an inch. It was an answer to prayers, some spoken, some silent in the hearts of many. I prayed, or said I did, that it would come but not until the kids got done trick-or-treating Friday night. That prayer was answered almost as if by design.
The children were all so beautiful, they and their guardian angels. It was still balmy, that pre-storm calm, so the scantily-dressed Cleopatras and Ladybugs had no more problem staying warm than the Draculas and Spidermen. We had around 400, a moderate Halloween considering it fell on a Friday. I particularly want to thank the two Bananas who came to the door and sent two little boys into peals of laughter.
Then came the wind, swirling leaves down the street, the first drops falling on the kids headed home. I brought in the pumpkin and battened down the hatches while thunder rolled and lightning flashed, then came inside as torrents came down, remembering to put pans under the places where things leak.
But the real blessing came the next morning when I opened a window to scare off stray dogs in my yard, and got my first breath of fresh, rain-washed air. It was like being home in Washington. I’d forgotten how wonderful that smell is - that smell that tells the frightened heart that everything is going to live after all. The calm before a storm is trumped by the peace that comes after.
And perhaps that’s what we’ll be feeling on this Wednesday following Tuesday’s election. It will be a morning-after for some, triumph for others, but perhaps peace for all. No matter the outcomes, we will take the results and live with them, work for the improvements we hope and see needed, regardless. Think of an election as a much-needed rain...
What I loved about the rain this weekend is what it did for the people I meet through my job at the market. It slowed them down, took the edge off their spirits, revived them from their worrisome desiccation. One mechanic, an owner of a repair shop who said business has been up and down, explained the systemic release from fear better than most city planners comprehend. He said:
“This rain will help plump up the oranges. The people will have more work, and so they’ll have money to buy things and fix their cars. Everything will be better.”
I think this rain was also a preliminary assurance that this drought may not be Divine retribution for the follies of our kind, visited on the good and evil alike. Perhaps we are not facing the total destruction of our rural way of life portended by the mega-drought scenarios, in which every drop of water is commanded and controlled, industrialized for those urban enclaves we think are the pinnacle of human existence.
Perhaps we’ll recognize in time that pure bliss is getting soaked in the first rain of the year, and waking up the next morning to birds singing and damp soil, to trees breathing huge sighs of relief -- and the prospect of oranges plumping and there being enough work.
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Trudy
Wischemann is a seriously refreshed writer who lives in Lindsay. You can send her your Halloween rain
observations c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below. 
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