Heavy Rain

We pull into the little seaside town, early evening, a few hours after a heavy rain: the streets bustling, parking lot nearly full. High summer tourism in mid-swing. As we stroll over to the swanky new bistro, and are led to a table near the kitchen, I flash back on the bookstore that used to be located here but can’t remember the names of the other businesses that have come and gone since. Earlier in the day, before the thunderclouds came marching from the west, Ali and I walked over to the Isinglass River for a soak. The water was low, so we nosed our way to the big rock at the big bend in the river, knowing it would deepen there. Slipping into that cold, bronzed water pure pleasure. The gin drink I’ve ordered soon arrives and I sip it slowly, awakening inside the sip to a sudden clarity of mind, a momentarily stripping away of extraneous thought. We’ve told our waitress to take her time, but an hour has passed and we still haven’t been served our meal. She comes out and asks me if I mind switching from the filet mignon to the skirt steak. There seems to be no choice so I nod. Twenty minutes pass until we finally flag down the waitress. She is wildly apologetic. Seems a man has sent back his filet mignon not once but twice. When our food finally comes, another entrée has been switched out. No explanation. Why I am writing about this? There is no lasting harm in such an encounter—though an obvious frustration arises when the service in a pricey restaurant dips below tolerable levels—and nothing of real consequence has occurred. There will always be men sending back their steaks and waitresses who struggle to accommodate what arrives in the wake of such arrogance. The haggard manager comps our bottle of wine and praises us for our generosity, though we haven’t exhibited any, merely tolerated a distraction. As we walk back out into the night, I recall arriving home from our afternoon outing as the first big raindrops started to fall. The boys had been crouching in the truck bed, ice cream cones in hand, and only just made it up the long front steps before the downpour. I turned back and joined my father under the garage roof as hail began to ping pong on its tin; and we stood there together for a while, happy and quiet, as the rain dropped down in sheets and thunder cracked and rumbled its way across the sky.