A Break in the Rain

We looked out through a break in the rain and some idiot asked, "Why is the waterfall falling so fast?"

"Because it's been raining for a month now straight," Mrs. Dean says. She's not far off. It's been stormy lately; thunder and lightning if we're lucky, tornado's if we're not. Off and on, but unrelenting, since that day we hurried home from the lake with the twisters on our tail.

Before that it was nice, though. We had a sunny early spring. The flowers came out one by one, and I noticed them all for the first time this year. I watched the leaves explode into broad or skinny and shapely bunches from tiny buds and bare branches before.

But though the branches were bare, the winter was mild too. The warmest January on record, with only a few days showing their teeth at 8 degrees. We even had a day so warm we walked around in shorts and stuck our feet in the lake.

And I noticed all the colours last fall, too. Before that stretched a lazy summer. A year of my life. Brief, in such terms. So what does that make this break in the rain?