I can remember as a little girl, maybe even a toddler, taking my warm pink “blankie” to the sliding glass door in the family room when it would rain. I’d lie on the floor, my faithful collie dog beside me and watch the raindrops make their way slowly, then fast, then slow again down the glass. Through them I saw how the treetops in the woods behind our changed form as they’d blur and distort and then blur again. This was my childhood. Blurry and distorted. It had to be seen that way.

Sunny kids who love everyone are vulnerable in a house of pain. A house of screaming fits and dishes in the sink, a dog who hasn’t been brushed all year. There probably was another way to live, but no one ever told them, showed them, how.

And so, every day was viewed through the wet glass, clear enough for some light to get through, some color, but lacking detail enough to convince yourself that the glass was happy for its bath of tears.

I still love the rain.

Funny how little things change–I am writing this from under my blanket. I am an old woman now, my bones ache; my skin, poultry. And my once thick hair is brittle and gray. But I am still that little girl, comforted by the rain, the way it blurred the sounds of my neglected sisters, our neglected life. I hear the drops on my roof now, and my faithful farm collie sighs.