This is the fifth time I’ve started this week’s column.
With the ongoing pandemic, protests and riots, my incensed fingers have been typing out loud opinions about racial injustice and current politics, but you’re already hearing from those more articulate than I. As for me, I need to calm down and cool off.
There’s a phrase “right as rain,” which means back in good order or feeling healthy again. Today, things are not right as rain, but rather than bombard you with a tirade, allow me to write about rain instead. At least it will lower my temperature.
OK, so, rain.
When I lived in Seattle, the forecast always seemed to be: Rain, with a chance of showers. Many Seattleites, especially newcomers to the area, groused about it, blaming the constant rain for their deep depression, pasty complexion and coffee obsession.
On the continent, rain has a bad rep. People save for a rainy day, sigh that into life some rain must fall, warn others to not rain on their parade, and grumble when a game is rained out. In small kid time they sing, “Rain, rain go away” and later, “Here comes that rainy day feeling again.”
I’ve never understood it. In fact, rain was the reason I lived comfortably in Seattle for many years. If it didn’t rain regularly, I was grumpy. The joke was that summer around Puget Sound lasted for only a couple of weeks, so enjoy it while you can! But during those two weeks of sunshine, I was moody and cranky. One hot summer, there was a long drought when grass dried, flowers drooped, lakes receded. I was parched and miserable.
Before moving to the Pacific Northwest, we lived on Oahu for a few years, right near the beach. Many would have been thrilled, but I spent some of my unhappiest days there. Never ending day-in day-out sunshine, stifling heat sunshine, sweaty humid sunshine, relentless boring sunshine, skin-scorching sunshine, glare-blinding sunshine.
It drove me nuts. My thirsty eyes glazed over as I ranted and raved. Rain … where’s the rain? I need rain! Friends and neighbors were ready to send me to the pupule house, but just in time, the family packed and moved to Seattle.
My love of rain comes from growing up in Hilo, the rain capital of Hawaii, although according to people who keep track of such things, Wai‘ale‘ale on Kauai holds the record as the rainiest part of the islands. But I always think that’s a useless statistic because Wai‘ale‘ale is a manini mountain where humans choose not to live unless they are hiding from the law, whereas Hiloans’ loud and proud claim to fame is the rain. We whistle, we wade, we wallow in it.
On Hawaii Island we have flash-flooding rain, where stream beds dried up for years suddenly gush to life after a surprise downpour. In Hilo, we have bucket rain, where you’re dry one minute then soaked the next, because a rain dump falls out of nowhere. You’ll get dripping wet running from your car to the store, to the house, to any distance farther than you can spit.
Here on the rainy side, if you let rain dictate your activities, you’ll stay home all day, every day. Besides, it can be pouring where you’re at but sunny and dry just down the hill.
Adults pay attention to the weather mostly when they need to hang clothes, cut grass, wash car but otherwise, what’s the point? And the kids don’t care. Yeah, it’s raining. So? They play dodgeball in the rain, made more fun by a mud-spinning ball, and ride bikes in the rain, aiming for puddles to spray them bottom up. We go swimming when it rains, convinced that the sea is warmer then.
Hawaiian culture tells us that rain is a blessing, and this is confirmed by ‘olelo. According to scholars, there are hundreds of words describing various kinds of rain in the Hawaiian language, but the general overall word is ua.
Ua. It’s calming.
Lucky we live Hilo.
Rochelle delaCruz was born in Hilo, graduated from Hilo High School, then left to go to college. After teaching for 30 years in Seattle, Wash., she retired and returned home to Hawaii. She welcomes your comments at rainysideview@gmail.com. Her column appears every other Monday.
