Gloomy, Drippy Days

Gloomy, drippy days--I hated them when I was a kid, when I was an adolescent. In childhood, it meant no biking around, no playing outside with my friends. On school days it meant putting on galoshes and a raincoat (and hat!) and sloshing my way to school, which, of course, was about ten miles away.

Or so it seemed on rainy days.

Later on, it had other dark meanings. No baseball practices or games. On spring afternoons I remember sitting in the Hiram School study hall, which had west-facing windows, and grieving when I saw, after lunch, the dark clouds forming on the horizon, moving my way. Why! I would think. Why does the weather hate me so much?!

My mother tried to assure me it was nothing personal. I was not so sure about that.

In college, the gloom remained for me. Rain meant no tennis practice or matches. I should have been grateful for the latter: Although I "earned" four varsity letters in tennis at Hiram College, our team was not exactly dominant, and I? Well, let's just say that I was empathetic--and wanted to see my opponents happy. It's not that they were really better than I ...

During my jogging years (I started in 1978, when I was in my early 30s, finished, oh, a half-dozen years ago or so when my balance and dizziness became issues), the rain didn't dissuade me. I would not go out to jog when lightning was dancing around, but otherwise I did. Being soaked when I arrived home was evident evidence that I was virtuous.

I spent the last decade of my teaching career at Western Reserve Academy here in Hudson, and, since we live only a couple of blocks away, I biked or walked to school on most days. (Lightning meant the car; blizzard meant the car.)  My umbrella above me.

I have to say that umbrella-users are sometimes ... disparaged around here--as if using one were a sign of virility's wane. I see people scurrying through the rain, sans umbrella, all the time. But I'd rather be wimpy and dry than virile and soaked. (Which, of course, is a clue to my age.)

And nowadays, virtually housebound, I feel another ill effect of such weather as we are having today (clouds, intermittent rain, occasional lightning and thunder). My mood darkens with the sky. (I feel, in ways, like my Boy Self: Why does the weather hate me so much?)

As I've written here recently, Joyce and I do not go out much at all now. We've been taking an afternoon walk of about a mile; we drive to pick up the groceries we've ordered at Acme once a week. That's about it. I know some people are going for drives, and we did a bit of that a couple of weeks ago, but my desire to do so has waned as the self-imprisonment has continued.

I just feel better when I look outside my study window and see people walking by with their dogs and/or their kids and/or their significant others.

I swear to you: Just this moment a woman walked briskly by with two (wet) dogs. (No umbrella.)

I don't want to complain--I've not lost a job, an income; I'm not yet sick; I am not alone. Upstairs at this moment is the love of my life. Complaining seems so ... petty. So ungrateful.

So I won't complain. I'll just wish that the sun were out. And that the weather didn't hate me so much.