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I had to move to New Orleans to learn to love the rain.
As a kid, rain just ruined things. Like parades or field trips or being able to play outside. When I was 11, we moved to the Gulf Coast, and that's when I first experienced real storms. In school, they would sit us in the hallway because of tornado warnings which I understood to mean that a tornado had been spotted in the area and I would just cry and cry because I knew this was it and I was never going to see my parents again. The kids who'd been raised in Mississippi did not act so dramatically.
But in New Orleans...down here we get summer showers and when I tell you that they are edenic I mean they will almost make you believe in a higher power.
Not every rain is a Summer Shower, even in the summertime. Some rains just make it steamier. (They're the worst rains.) A Summer Shower comes when the day is so muggy you can feel the air pushing on your chest making it hard to even breathe. It's so hot you think to yourself, "This must be what it feels like to burn up in a fire."
By the time you notice that it's gotten dark in the room, a Summer Shower is afoot.
Summer Showers crash thunder so loud it makes you jump and your chest rattles like someone is pounding a bass drum that's sitting on top of it. Lightning strobes and oftentimes pops because it probably just hit a big tree somewhere nearby. The rain rains straight down, hard and steady, until the flower beds are drenched and the hydrangeas seem happy. It rains harder still and water runs down the streets and pools in the low places in your yard. A really good Summer Shower will rain down so hard it looks white outside. You find it easy to imagine yourself in a tropical timezone.
Best of all, the wind blows, and it gets cool for a little while. Not just cooler. Cool like spring. The sun is more than hidden and the rain washes away the thickness of the day. It's cool enough to sit out on your porch and enjoy this magical display of Mother Nature's strength and beauty.
Summer Showers restore your faith in nature's ability to heal itself and give you a little bit of renewed hope where this morning it was fleeting.
