It rained one sweltering July afternoon, for hours non-stop and well into the evening. My Chinese friend said, “Like summer rain…” as if there was something to follow. I stared at him blankly.
“You know, like the saying, “Like summer rain; when it rains, it pours.”
“Oh,” was all that I could reply. My entire life I have used the idiom incorrectly and out of context. I thought it was like Murphy’s Law only by intensity instead of timing; but instead it was about the inverse proportions of rarity and intensity.
It rained today in Shanghai. In my room, listening to the skipping cadence of rain on roof, I could have been in Makati. The weather woman smiled on TV and followed a blue arrow behind her with a pen hand. She could have been telling the story of ancient sailors going back home to their families: I understood nothing she said. But the shapes I knew from Mr. Malabanan's class in high school: it looked as if her hand is the wind pushing clouds from the Philippines to China. It rained Philippine water in Shanghai. The streets hissed, giving up after a half-hearted fight and sighing a hazy mist; and the city is rescued from the torture of summer. But it cannot know the relief I felt.
I pulled out the last blazing laughter we shared, tucked hidden in my chest. It was but a melancholy ember of a smile then. I cupped it in my hands and pursed my lips into an almost soundless whisper, "Whooooooooooo?"
I crackled and roared back to life: You.
I have cursed the kilometers between us but I learned that without this distance of seas I would not have come to stretch my arms to reach for you. For too long I have let my hands fall feeble and useless at my sides when you were but an arm's length away.
It took wavelengths to broadcast what I should have said all along.
When I said I was miserable, I meant, "Make me happy."
When I said I was happy, I meant, "Let's stay together a little longer."
I will be back and thank you so much for the rain.
