stories in my head.

s

the rain girl

     This is a little piece I wrote awhile ago from one, tiny seed of inspiration. I was a little nervous to share it with the world but I have decided to anyway. 

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     She couldn’t count the raindrops, but she could taste them. She could smell the clean air and dance in the puddles. She could wring out her hair and stomp her galoshes dry. She could sit by her window and watch the raindrops. Each one made a different sound sometimes, and then sometimes they joined together like a pleasant army.

    Many people despise the rain, connecting it with sadness and gloominess. Not the Rain Girl. For her, it bestowed upon those who were ready a sort of peaceful melancholy; the kind that sunshine does away with because it makes everyone want to be busy. Sunshine is for those who can’t sit still. Rain is for thinkers, dreamers, and the Rain Girl.

    On one of these rainy days, when the alley cats emerged from sewers with matted fur and tender paws, Sadie (The Rain Girl has a name like you and I, you know) was walking with her bright red umbrella and old thoughts in her young mind. She went down the narrow street between the tightly packed, tin-roofed apartments of her neighborhood, all the way to the end of the street. There was a cafe there, and she went inside.

    The cafe was the sort of place it might be nice to go if you want to read a book, or write a story, or fall in love. It was not a place where sad things generally happened.

    There was just the right amount of people there. Just enough to give you that delightful sense of friendship with strangers, but not too many to crowd you out the door. Sadie saw her Aunt Clara sitting with Jimmy Huxley at a table near the rainy window. Young, pretty, and around twenty-six, Aunt Clara was the only mother Sadie had ever known. Jimmy Huxley was the man she was in love with.

Sadie made sure they didn’t see her. She didn’t want to interrupt them. The lady selling coffee at the cafe gave her some hot chocolate, and The Rain Girl chose another window to watch the rain. She sat there for a rather long time, watching the clouds and the street and the people. Soon just she, Aunt Clara and Jimmy Huxley, an old man reading a newspaper, and the lady selling coffee were left in the cafe. And Sadie began to listen.

Jimmy Huxley said, “I love you, but –”, and then someone came in and the little bell over the door was louder than Jimmy’s words.

“I love you, but –”

Bell.

Aunt Clara rushed out of the cafe and down the street. The Rain Girl watched her go. Jimmy Huxley put his head in his hands and stayed there until the streetlamps turned on.

For days, Sadie didn’t see Aunt Clara except at meals. She didn’t speak with her mouth, and what’s worse - she didn’t speak with her eyes. Her curtains were always closed, shutting out the raindrops.

The Rain Girl got up one day and went to Marj’s house with her red umbrella and new thoughts in her young head. Marj would know.
    Marj invited Sadie in and sat her down and let her talk. Marj knew how to listen. As the oldest resident of that small neighborhood, she knew great many things.

“She looks sad,” Sadie said. “Is that what happens when someone says, ‘I love you, but?’”

“Yes, Sadie.” Marj whispered, her eyes on the closed door and her hands in her dress pockets. “Because love with conditions isn’t really love at all.”

Sadie walked in the rain a long time, thinking. About Aunt Claras, and Jimmy Huxleys, and Marj’s, and rain.

And the Rain Girl planted love in every raindrop.
  

stories make me shiver

A lot of parents in real life, or in movies or in books or wherever, are told by their children at one time or another:

"I want to be just like you someday."

The parent then usually shakes his (or her, if it's a mother) head and says:

"No, you don't. Be yourself. But don't be like me."

So is it strange for me to say that I want my future children to be just like me?

Well.

Not just like me. I don't want any child of mine to be exactly like me. Even if their life held the same or similar things to what mine did, I don't want them to react the same way. And I don't want that because of many reasons.

Reason the first, those reactions were painful. Reason the second, they are their own person.

I don't know what I'm saying. Except that I want them to be the beautiful part of me. I want them to understand things and love them deeply and richly.

Oh!

How I want that for them. I have discovered such beauty in this life. Such glory.

The joys of opening a new book and immersing yourself in that world. I want them to have it.

Books are life.

Stories are… stories make me shiver. I love them so much and I would die if my children didn't love them. I would die 'til I was dead.

That's why I want them to be like me. I want them to shiver with life. To actually convulse as if they were ill or obsessed or in love. Because that's what stories do to you. It's the best kind of sickness.

Oh, glorious, wonderful, beautiful, alive things, stories are! The man I love must love stories. Well, also, I wouldn't love him if he didn't, I don't think.

I dream of the day when my child comes to me and says: "I want to be just like you."

I refuse to tell them they are wrong. I swear, I will not to patronize them or belittle their precious, beautiful mind and heart. I will simply say:

"Be the beauty that has taken hold of my inside. Be the glory and the morbidity and the wonder of stories. Yes, you can be like me. We're all human. Please, dear, wonderful little child, learn to be human and let stories be your teacher. That is the best way."

And then perhaps I'll give my child a mysterious sort of smile, as if to add, "Take it from someone who knows."

s