Playing in the rain

I'm glad I was taught the skill of playing in the rain. When we were kids growing up on Long Island, and summers up at Candlewood Lake, there were always rainy days during summer vacation, and houses not big enough to contain the energy of three kids and their friends. I can distinctly remember being sent outside to play, even if it was raining. It didn't happen very often, but it did happen. And that is something that we don't do with our kids any more. I fondly look back at those times with wet sneakers and soaked t-shirts and shorts, having a ball in someone's backyard. The license to run out in the rain and stay out for as long as we wanted was radical, but it was the thought was that the temperature was the same as the lake or the pool that we were so desperately trying to get permission to get into-that rain couldn't possibly hurt us-and it didn't. I hope I gave my own kids that sense of freedom and fun. There is nothing like it. We went for our evening walk a few days ago and it was lightly raining. I brought me right back to those summer days when I was younger. We only did one lap because I wasn't THAT nostalgic, but it was enough to jar my memories and make me smile. Sometimes I have to stop myself from being so rigid-I have to try and have that same sense of WOW that I had when I was young. I'm not that terribly old, after all. But it is a slippery slope and I don't want to find myself at the botton, already rigid and unbending. Getting out in the rain and just letting go-doing whatever it was you planned on for a sunny day, and acting as though the rain were not a deterrent. Just do it. It is a beautiful chance to get outside and see what the rain brings out in nature-it's a different bunch of singing birds that hang out when its raining!