I Could Never Outrun the Rain

In the tropics, there are really only two seasons: wet and dry.

During the wet season, it often would rain constantly for days on end. This was typhoon season, so often the rains were accompanied by strong winds. Sometimes, the water would find its way underneath the front door of our house and run in a long stream across the living room floor and out into the playroom.

Dry season is confusing to most people. Even in the dry season, we would get rain almost daily - unless there was a very bad drought. Dry season rains are special. They would come in the late afternoon and would come down with a vengence. Dry season raindrops are like so many bullets falling out of the sky. Large drops that sting your skin when they hit. But, dry season rains would only last about 15 minutes, and then they were gone.

Dry season rains are special in another way. You can hear them coming. They sound like a train rumbling across the rice fields. It would start low and far off, then get louder and louder. Eventually, you could see it - a wall of water moving closer and closer. Then it was on you, drenching everything in its path. And then in a few minutes, gone. And you could see it moving away from you, and the train had passed - softer, softer, softer. Then the secadas would start singing their songs and the steam would rise up from the ground and the sunset would burn deep red against the horizon. The secadas would go to bed, and the crickets would take over the constant song of the islands - thus began the 12 hours of darkness. It was this way every day.

Our school in the province was built on the far side of a large field. Often, after school we would stay and play in the field. Soccer was the game of choice, but if we weren't in the mood, there was a bamboo grove near the swing set that offered hours and hours of great fun. Bamboo is amazingly strong, and we would all climb up to the tops of our "tree" and look out over the land. This way, we could spot the rains from a much farther distance, often before we could even hear them. When they were spotted, we would shout and slide down to the ground and position ourselves for the race of our lives. We would crouch down ready to explode off the ground whenever we could see the wall of water. The oldest in the group would shout, "Ready, .............GO!!" And we would be off as fast as our little legs could go. We would always head for the duplexes that were on the other side of the field opposite from the school. We never made it. The rain always caught us, and by the time we found shelter on the front porches, we were soaked to the skin. We would stand there panting and dripping and smiling and waiting for the sun to come back out for our last hour of play in the bamboo or on the soccer field. We did this just about every day. And every day as the rumble was getting louder and louder, we all believed that this was the day that we would outrun the rain.