Please, February, a little rain before you go

(Disclaimer:  The purpose of today's post is to share the art of Tomoharu Kairaku and try to coax the rain back to Los Angeles.  Oh, to have that power.)

My closet is a museum.  The only umbrella we own, an ancient, pop-open compact contraption resides somewhere beneath or beside a navy blue bathing suit, the very model of defeated elastic,  overlooked in the recent purge, and a prehistoric flat-bed scanner bigger than a couch cushion.  Rain is forecast for Southern California, beginning today and perhaps lasting, on and off, through Sunday.  They are preparing the lifeboats.  I believe it is foolish to be too hopeful.  We stand in costly, dangerous drought. 

I hope, if the much-touted precipitation arrives in any quantity, that I get to spend some of the time in bed, like Tomoharu Kairaku's cheek-to-cheek companions below, listening to what I think of as February sounds.  Living on the second floor, if the weather is more showery, the sound is tire whoosh on the street.  Anything heavier splashes on the walkway and drips from shamelessly patched gutters, plinks against the vent above the stove.

I love rain and I love February, month of my birthday, month of elementary school classroom fun with Presidential silhouettes and Valentine exchanges, month of recess spent indoors playing Steal the Bacon, month of taking myself out on a wet holiday from work to shop for heart stickers and patterned ribbon, never too old to make my own cards, my own envelopes.  The February of my memory is brimming with rain - for the bus ride downtown to shop with birthday money, for grown-up birthday dinners reached via glistening freeways and puddled roads.  I am counting on February, miniature month, to set us on the path to restoration.

Think good thoughts for us, for farmers in the San Joaquin Valley and all agricultural areas, for ski resorts and lakes in which boat docks and water are dozens of yards apart, for firefighters and native creatures whose quests for food and water have them roaming back yards and city streets.

Think us a little bit of winter, our version of it, thank you, not the likes of which other parts of the country have endured, if you don't mind.  Sunny days will return soon enough.