Summary: A glimpse into the past filled with broken rules, rainy days, and an anxious heart.
Inspiration: Nonfiction Assignment In College
Date: 01/20/20
Word Count: 3,042
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The skies were gray. It wasn’t that the skies had been gray all day, either, but it was that rapid change that often promised foreboding news or earthshaking weather. I lived in a valley and had been warned of storms all sixteen years of my life, so the rapid color change from blue skies meant for flying kites to gray skies meant for troubles had me almost dropping the camera I had been playing with. My heart wouldn’t have raced so badly if it hadn’t been for the fact this was a brick of a digital camera that was far past its prime (it really should have died years ago). Eventually my racing heart settled down and I saw that the sky wasn’t gray so much as it was… dim. It was as if the sun had been dimmed down and one single, massive cloud had stretched over the entire world. It felt like a foreboding sign – it probably was one.
Craning my neck to steal a glance through my blinded window, I tried to judge when the rain clouds would burst. As if God Himself had heard my thoughts and decided to have a little fun, I heard a rumbling of distant thunder that quickly turned into an air shattering crack that was better suited to a cartoon show than real life. The suddenness of it almost had me dropping my camera (again) as the clouds burst and rain fell like a sign of impending doom – which wasn’t far off. The rain crashed against the roof like it wanted to bring me and my entire house down (a small part of me that was bitter as salted earth couldn’t help but hope that it would succeed).
For a moment, I thought my thoughts would come true, but then the rain’s angry screams softened and became something gentle and smooth. I would have called it a lullaby if it wasn’t for the fact my room was still gray and dismal. I had slumped against the wall of the bedroom since I was already sitting on the floor (because my mother hadn’t managed to ruin that small joy, yet), and from there I had the perfect position to peek under my blinds on the window that led to a sheer, two-story drop down to the driveway of my front yard. From this angle I could see towering trees, but I couldn’t quite see the road. It was like the entire world was sectioned off and secluded as the rain fell in sheets, like it was doing its best to drown the entire world.
It could have been seconds, minutes, or hours before I slowly looked down to the camera that I still had clutched in my hands. I could feel the grin pulling at my lips (such a cliché phrase, but so accurate) as I raised my camera to the window, nudged it up under the yellowed plastic blinds that were once white, and began taking pictures. It took a dozen shots before I gave in and raised the blinds a couple of inches (enough to get away with it, but not enough to get in trouble). It was a dozen more pictures before I realized there was a way to get an even clearer picture. It was a window I was looking through, after all, and windows could be opened. I could just… open it. I could open it just for a few minutes – just for the picture. (I was always bad at lying to myself.)
Fourteen.
I was fourteen when I was finally trusted to use a digital camera. Digital, of course, is a term that can be used rather loosely for the camera that was given to me. It was an old camera from my dad’s construction site where he was superintendent, and it had the same personality as him – big as a brick, cranky, unlikely to be helpful, and only allowing for a burst of usefulness before sitting in a corner and doing nothing. It really wasn’t that bad of a camera considering I had nothing else (and the pictures made for great distractions). Because the camera ran on an SD card, I could take as many pictures as I wanted and upload them to my just as ancient computer and hope that the transfers didn’t crash it like the last time I had the audacity to attempt so.
Even before I was glued to that camera I had been used to looking through a screen (or, more accurately, a window) for things. I had a bad memory, I loved looking at pictures, and I always wanted to remember the stories that a moment in time could tell. There was no story too small to me. There was no story that couldn’t be told. From ages fourteen to sixteen I practically lived life through the lens of a camera. It was easier. I could pretend I was just observing everything. I could press a button, get a picture, and it was all so easy and simple. I was happy. Happiness like that doesn’t last for long, though. Happiness derived from ignorance never lasts for long. I spent my life looking through a screen and after something like that? Eventually, there comes a time where you can’t help but wonder what it’s like to experience it for yourself.
Sixteen.
I had been sixteen when that rainstorm hit my town and changed my life. The thought of opening my window to get better pictures had my heart racing and tripping over itself and my palms were sweating like I was about to stand up in the middle of class and ask the teacher to explain what she was saying just one more time (it wasn’t my fault she whispered like a church mouse). My palms were drenched in sweat and I could tell my eyes were as wide as those ugly cat saucers that my grandma seemed to love more than her own children. A racing heart, sweaty palms, and wide eyes – it was so cliché and yet here I was experiencing them all at once.
My hands were shaking, my breath was picking up the pace like I was an asthmatic having an attack (I probably was, but I wouldn’t find that out for a few years more). I knew I was muttering things under my breath, and I didn’t have to pay attention to myself to know they were platitudes and promises to cover up the fear I felt as I looked between the window and the door – both shut tight and flush against their wooden frames. My mother’s words were ringing in my head like the final tolls of the town church bell – overpowering, impossible to drown out, and no chance of ignoring. Even now, years later, I still hear those words in her voice. They’re impossible to forget and they probably always will be.
Don’t lock your bedroom door – what if I need to get in? Don’t open your windows! Bats and bugs and birds could just fly right in! Michelle, are you listening to me? I’m speaking. I’m telling you something important and you should be listening to me, Michelle–
I still remember all the excuses (I could be in trouble, birds could get in, best not to risk it) I made for her back then, too. They had dripped off my tongue as easy as the lies I used to tell her to try and maintain a scrap of privacy (a scrap I never managed to get). Those church bell orders seemed to ring louder in my head the longer I stared at – through – my window. The sweatiness of my palms meant I almost lost my camera to gravity (again). I remember the glinting bronze of the doorknob – a shiny young thing placed in a door decades old – winked back from its locked position. I had already broken one rule, that day, so what was one more?
My entire body was still shaking and sweating as I pressed my palms against the upper wooden ledge of that old and dilapidated window. I remember it took all my strength to just wiggle it open even an inch. I wasn’t sure, I’m still not, if I was weak due to the fear of getting caught or if my mother had the entire house controlled to do her bidding. I still don’t know which idea is worse, of the two. Steadying myself with a few deep breaths (which didn’t help at all), I kept pushing the window open, succeeding in getting another half inch.
Crouched down and staring through the little crack where I could hear rain pounding against the rough pavement of the driveway down below, I remember my eyes catching sight of the line of dead bugs I had never noticed – or, more accurate, the dead bugs I had always ignored. It had been like a game of pretend. If I pretended they weren’t there, then I could pretend I wasn’t trapped in my room with nothing but a camera and old computer to sustain me. The thought still sticks in my mind even now. I had more in common with those dead bugs than anything living, and that overwhelming fear that I could become them had me pushing my window up all the way with a burst of strength I hadn’t known I was capable of. For a long moment, I had just stared at where my window was open.
Thirteen.
I was thirteen the last time I played outside in the rain. A decent little rainstorm had been going and I had rushed outside, running around under the rain and laughing at the top of my lungs because it was so amazing! It was freeing and wonderful and beautiful. I was getting soaked to the bone, and it was the best feeling in the world with the summer air still warm around me. It had been a scene out of one of my books or a clip from a treasured movie. Everything was green and gray and living and soft and it was so perfect. Thirteen. I was thirteen, and I could have stayed out there forever – not just the few minutes I had managed. My time was cut short because I heard a window open and then there was screaming.
It’s hard to remember exactly what my mother yelled at me when so much time has passed, but I remember I didn’t go outside when it rained anymore after that. I remember I went to the shower and let the rain wash off of me and not even the shower water could fool me into thinking it was rain. The bathroom, once spacious and accommodating, had turned into something cramped and uncomfortable that made it feel as if everything was crashing down around me. As much as I wanted to fight back and argue against her, she was my mother. She knew what was best for me. That was all I could tell myself, but I knew that I had just wanted to experience something that everyone else had. Every other kid I had known was allowed to go out and play in the rain when it was light and warm and nice like this, but I couldn’t because… She had never given me an excuse. I just couldn’t. It wasn’t allowed. It was never allowed. It wasn’t fair. No matter how much I tried to justify it to myself, it was never fair. It wasn’t fair…
Sixteen.
My window was open for the first time in years and the rain had been falling like curtains that were attempting to shroud the entire world. I had managed to halfheartedly take a picture or two, but for the first time I let the camera slip out of my hands on purpose and let it hit the carpeted floor (it was a small drop, anyways). I knew I wasn’t lying to myself anymore, and the world outside in front of me was something entirely different to what I grew up in. It was alien, foreign, new, different, and exciting. I wasn’t looking through a screen, anymore. I wasn’t looking through a window anymore.
Fear was still coursing through me stronger than anything, but my wonder was stronger. I had stretched my arm out past the safety of the roof and gutters and within one heartbeat and the next it was completely soaked. There was so much rain that day it felt like my hand was underwater and I found that I couldn’t do anything except laugh. It was only hours later, when I had to scrub my eyes, that I realized I had been crying in that moment. As I stared then, though, all I could focus on was the fact that the entire world was alive and breathing. The world was filled with soft and muted greens that faded at the edges. I still couldn’t believe I ever thought that world gray.
A burst of wild wind had wiped away the smell of dust and it swept the dead bugs away with it. The only smell left to breathe in was rain and wet grass and curls of mist (but no longer the scent of dust and decay). I remember I was laughing and had my body half hanging out the window as I tried to catch as much rain on my arms as possible, fear of getting caught sliding to the back of my mind as I just lived. For just one moment, a single moment, I allowed myself to break all the rules my mother had in place. The rain drenched me and I hoped it would never end.
Seven.
I was seven when I managed to get myself trapped on the playground in a sudden rainstorm. I wasn’t afraid, back then – not when I was under an old pirate ship structure and tucked away under wooden boards that kept the rain off my head. My mother had always instilled inside me that I should be afraid of the rain, but curled up in that ship and watching it fall down and chase all the other children away, I saw that I was alone. It wasn’t a bad sort of alone, either, like the type when you’re overwhelmed and hidden in a corner at a party because you don’t know anyone there, and then, of course, you lose sight of the one friend that promised she would be right back.
No… That had been the type of alone you felt when you were comfortable and had a warm blanket fresh from the dryer, a good book worn and ragged from over usage, and a hot drink with curls of steam still coming out. It was the sort of melancholy alone that I didn’t understand as a child, but it was a feeling that stuck with me throughout the years. I haven’t seen that playground ship in years, but I remember that for that one afternoon it became my entire world, and it was a world that I would always constantly try to get back to.
Sixteen.
The rain began to end as all good things tended to do. Even now I’m not sure how long I sat there watching and feeling the rain as it petered off into a soft drizzle, but I remember what I did once I realized that the moment couldn’t last. I had pulled myself back inside and wiped my arms off on my shirt – which had been soaked thoroughly enough that it looked like a water bottle had been upended on my head. I changed quickly enough, knowing that my mother wouldn’t care or notice. For as scared as I was to “act out,” I knew how to hide the evidence of the things I did that she never approved of. Even as I cleaned up and hid, though, I remember that the smile wouldn’t come off my face. The camera beside my feet, safe and sound, also had the pictures that I had taken once the window had opened – proof I had done something crazy and gotten away with it. The pictures, no matter how out of focus and blurred, were proof of a moment where my skin had been rain-touched and my heart had been bursting with warmth.
After my tidying up and quick change of shirts I had settled back down by the window, attention utterly consumed at how green everything was outside – at how alive everything was. The ground looked to be teeming with life and the air that seeped through my window smelled of living plants and rain-soaked ground. I remember it wasn’t until years later that I had learned the word for that. Petrichor – a word that described the smell of the ground after the rain, but in that moment, a word like that only meant content, to me. It meant happiness. It meant peace. It meant joy.
An eternity had passed in the seconds it took to crawl to my knees, ragged old carpet doing nothing to soften the sharp pain it took to balance before I managed to pull my window shut. Closing the last inch was harder to do than opening it, my heart no longer beating fast, but instead sinking towards the earth that was now soaked in rain. The sound of footsteps on the stairs, however, had me forcing the window down and locking it back up tight – it had me locking myself back up tight. I knew my mother was coming up the stairs and I knew I would have to act like I hadn’t just broken a half a dozen rules, maybe even lie to her face, but I also knew those few minutes with my arms out the window had just changed everything.
The rain finally ended as the doorknob began to turn, my anxiety and fear fading away as I took one last peek out my window. Sunbeams were peeking through disappearing clouds and reflecting off a soaked world, lighting everything up and letting me glimpse a completely different world for the few seconds I looked. As I looked back to my mother, I hid my smile and silently admitted, if only to myself, that I couldn’t wait for the next rainstorm.