A Rainy Morning

     Christmas is behind me, and it was a lovely one filled with days of food, cheer, friends coming, and friends going. Ushering in a new year provided more of the same, and for most of the days, a soft rain fell. A gentle, soaking rain that knew when to enter our world and when to let up, only to return later.
     Rains in South Florida aren't always of the gentle sort, as anyone who has felt and heard our summer storms can attest. So when the atmospheric deities gifted us with gentle rains in this gentle season, I reveled in it. Charcoal-gray clouds transported and released the steady stream of droplets. Palm fronds and leaf tips dipped and danced under the weight of wet crystalline pendants. Grass blades, pine needles, and large-leaved Elephant Ears sparkled.
      My energy level reflected the rhythmic fall against the windows, roof, and patio floor. The steady sound invited peace and contentment for several days. Moreso, when holiday music hummed in the background.
     The gentle spilling rain also awakened a gratitude for belonging to a place––my place. My home felt like a cocoon: the kitchen––an olfactory heaven of herbs and spices, blended, stirred, and sampled before being served; cinnamon, nutmeg, and lemon simmering on a back burner; and the voices of friends and neighbors stopping by with good wishes.
     Simultaneously, I felt blessed to have a square of green both front and back of the house. Space that I watch, and have come to know intimately over the years. Space, that in gentle, soaking rains, flourish. This year, our back square of green sports two honeybee hives, and in between spilling clouds I sat and observed "the girls," as we refer to them. I chatted with them, their buzz being their chat back to me. One particular day, I told them how the grand ending of one year leading into another had suspended my creative flow. They commiserated telling how they had been hampered with gray and rainy skies, not having been able to forage for nectar and pollen, and how they had to huddle inside their hives. I enumerated to them my resolutions for the new year. They buzzed they would hold me to it. A buzzing push, yes, that's what I needed to hear.
     So here it is, ten days into the year 2014. I should be flexing my creative muscles for a productive twelve months after a three-week hiatus. Instead, I indulge one of my addictions: watching the rain on another rainy morning.
     It's been a wild and woolly last few weeks covering a large swath of the country. With unending snow and low temperatures, I hope you were able to hunker down safely and warmly, and indulge yourself with a writing project or reading a book.