Dreaming of Rain

When it finally rains here, it happens like a dream. Heavy rain (when it falls about four times a year) usually happens in the middle of the night. It happens so rarely, the mere sound of it confuses me now…I wake up and think someone is watering their lawn at 3 a.m., then I remember “that sound is rain” and my mind wanders back home (to Massachusetts) and I forget where I am for a second. By the time we wake up in the morning, it’s as if the rain never happened at all; the sun is piercing through the bedroom windows and the only indication it happened at all is that there are a couple small puddles where neighbor's sprinkler systems don’t reach, and the cars look a little cleaner. Months ago, it rained at night and we woke up early to take the dog for a walk. There was something weird on our car windshields...and it was on the corners of people's rooftops too...it looked like snow. It had hailed a very fine, white slush that looked like snow but the sun was already glaring down and melting it away faster than we could marvel at it. People would wake up a couple hours later and never even know it had been there at all. Sometimes I feel like there is some kind of magic shield above San Diego that doesn’t allow bad weather to exist as anything more than a fading dream.