The best of the season

I was beginning to worry that the rainy season wouldn't be rainy at all. It seemed to me that our dry season was wetter than what was supposed to be the wet season.

"Why isn't it raining?" I asked some of our local friends.

They shrugged. "Weird weather patterns," they said. Whatever that means.

Then, this week, the rain started.

On Tuesday night I was awakened by a fierce storm. The lightening and thunder carried on for what seemed like an eternity, and just when I thought it couldn't possibly rain any harder, the racket on our tin roof would increase.

It was so loud that I was afraid, in my sleepy irrationality, the roof would actually cave in and we would all be drenched and mushed under the tin sheets.

I knew that the rest of the house's inhabitants couldn't possibly be sleeping. It was way too loud.

This is silly, I thought. We are all just laying in our beds, awake, listening to the rain, unable to sleep. We should get up and read stories or play a game or something.

Finally, I fell back asleep. But the rain did not rest. It poured down relentlessly.

In the morning Cousin John came with me to haul our buckets of water for breakfast from the well. We slogged down the lane in our bright blue rain jackets. The lane was a slick and goopy muddy mess.

Back in the kitchen, it was so dark that we had to light candles in order to start breakfast.

"John," I said, "I decree that we have hot chocolate and biscuits with jam for breakfast, to accompany our oatmeal. It's just that sort of day."

He grinned. "I second that decree," he said.