You get different kinds of rain. In Joburg you get huge fat drops that fall from cloud blackened skies and become storms that thunder down on roofs, flooding gutters and turning the roads into rivers.
I drove through a couple of those. It’s the only time Joburg drivers slow down. During one varsity break we went through a particularly bad one, me and three friends in my Citi Golf.
The visibility was zero. It felt like I was driving through a lake. A pinecone two fists big bonked my bonnet so hard we nearly shat ourselves. We were so happy to get home we got blind drunk and went jumping in puddles.
In Cape Town it whispers down like it’s whispering down right now. Reminds me of when The Cub was born – there was a lot of rain like this back then. It felt like the world was being washed clean for her. When I think back on that time I remember Vampire Weekend, this song in particular:
It’s weird to think back to that time, to remember what it felt like to hold this little stranger, to look into her liquid eyes so blue they were black and feel her stare right back at me, right into me.
Her and J-Rab are asleep next door, curled up safe and warm and I’m lying here, listening to the rain, a feeling inside like someone dropped a giant stone into the well of my soul and it won’t stop sinking.
J-Rab made a cup of tea, brought it here to drink but The Cub started crying and J-Rab went to her because I was working, which is what it always feels like I’m doing.
Hours later I emerged from email, no sound but the falling rain, and went next door to find my girls fast asleep.
We didn’t say goodnight. It’s a small thing the first couple of times.
I brushed my teeth, threw a sleepshirt on and came back here, restless.
I stared at J-Rab’s tea.
You get different kinds of rain. Rain that you splash in, rain that you run from, rain that soaks you to the bone, warm rain you don’t mind at all.
But that quiet rain, the kind that falls at 2am on a Thursday as the hour-hand creeps toward the darkest hour, you remember that rain.
The sound of it whispering goodnight…
-ST
