Rain, Rain, go away!

It is 7:57pm, Manila time, and it’s freezing cold. It has been raining since around 2pm and it hasn’t stopped yet. Well at least it has subsided a bit. Rainy season is finally here! It is during these times that we all love to just stay at home, eat something hot like porridge or a bowl of soup, or just simply lay down in our bed feeling the cold breeze.

Aside from songs, scents and places, rainy days definitely brings back a lot of memories. Good or bad, we often find ourselves having a moment probably staring at the window pane and remembering those days that we had back then, that shaped our past. I don’t know what it is, but there is really something nostalgic about rains. Once it pours, we just can’t help but feel good and just like a snap of a finger, we’re taking a trip down Memory Lane. Probably because most of the good and sometimes even bad memeories we tend to keep happened when it’s raining. Like those with friends, family, loved ones, the one you’re with at that time, or even the time when our parents taught us the song “Rain, Rain, go away, little (insert your name as a kid) wants to play,” and lots more. One would probably go, “Umuulan nung sinagot nya ko nun!”, “Uulan pag kumanta sya!”, or “It was raining when we broke up!”, and “We kissed in the rain!”, stuff like that. Which is why most of us attach personal events everytime it rains.

Bathing in the rain outside with friends is a staple childhood memory I enjoy recalling everytime the cloud cries abundantly. We would play habulan or hide and seek (taguan) around our community, take a shower on those what we call alulod, and get hurt at times but it was super super fun! During our time back then, we have spacious grounds to play on, clean surroundings and yes, clean alulods haha! That’s why I used to tease my twin brothers that they didn’t get to enjoy bathing in the rain nowadays because aside from our now dirty and crowded surroundings, it floods easily.

But of course too much of anything is bad, and sometimes it becomes disastrous. When it rains really hard, specially here in our country, aside from the flood, it destroys a lot of properties and to some, their life. Heavy pouring of rain usually results to a much devastating plague you would probably swear not to enjoy it again. Just recently a cyclone in Myanmar killed about 40,000 people! Here at our own Philippine provinces, native people always suffer everytime a storm hits their towns. It is indeed a site you wouldn’t want to see and a place you wouldn’t want to be in.

But despite all that, we would always find ways to have pleasant images when it rains. Even if most of us surely had some bad rain experience, like me and my family when one time back in the 90’s our roof was blown away because of the strong wind, it will definitely become a funny one that you would just laugh it off. Knowing us Pinoys, we sometimes treat our problems or tragedies like something to laugh about. We often find ways to insert happiness through it, to ease the burden. And just like a line from the Southborder song, “There’s a rainbow always after the rain..”