A letter to a new boy

I think my strange desire for rain these days is a response to all the people who have been keeping me so busy for the past 2 months. I think I desire a rainy Sunday because a small part of me may be ready for hibernation. This is sad because I haven't even gone camping once this summer, although I have gone hiking, kayaking and beaching. But I have a strange, completely out of character desire for some extreme weather, a thunderstorm, hurricane, snow storm ... if only for a day. I want to order in Indian food or Chinese food and watch movies, good rainy day movies, and read my book and take naps ... the kind of naps where you awake unsure of how long you've slept because its been dark all day so maybe its still 2 in the afternoon or maybe it is 6 in the evening. and then when the weather ends I'd like to go for a walk the kind of walk that fills your senses with after rain smells and sounds, wet concrete, wet soil, sound of car wheels splashing around on the wet streets. I'd like to go into a restaurant that is full of comfort food, that has no pretensions, and that is full of families eating their quiet Sunday evening family dinners. I want the Sunday blues!

But only for one day, because I also wouldn't mind putting on my vintage swimsuit, my big sunglasses, sunning out by a pool at an old school hotel in the Catskills and pretending its 1950 and my husband just came back from Germany and we got a house on the GI bill. I'd drink a gin and tonic, take a Valium for my nerves and listen to Frank Sinatra all day, while gossiping about my Mah Jong buddies.

Mars would be an interesting thing to view. I never wanted to explore space as a child, the thought scared me too much, space was so big, and I just couldn't understand it. I couldn't understand why it was all just so dark. I remember when I was in the 3rd grade I would lay awake at night and wonder if I were just a little ant on the fingernail of a huge giant, and if maybe our world that seems so big is just a speck of dust on something even bigger. and it would overwhelm me and I would ask my mom about it and she would just laugh at me. I thought broccoli was a tree, a little tree and we were eating the little trees that belonged to very little people, we were eating their food. and maybe someone is eating our very big trees. its amazing I think about those nights when I was so little and didn't know how to express my thoughts. Kids are good thinkers, but adults are not the best listeners.