Rainy day

Don't ask me why, but the rain in Bulungula smells like Michigan air. Which means o me it smells of nostalgia, innocence, magic summers and sadness I'm not old enough for. Too many mothballs of grief for comprehension.

Mollie and I got up for a rain splashed sunrise, from which the sun was as sluggish to emerge as we were to wake. Walking the fluctuating waterline in the liquid dawn, I kept hearing slapping footfalls running up behind me. Whether they were really leaves, paranoia, or ghosts I know not. But I wasn't scared.

It reminded me of other early morning beach walks, it reminded me of reminding myself of my mother. That moment in the D.R., with my toes the first to touch that Caribbean morning foam, and jotsom and ... flotsom? (How does it go?) I was maybe beginning to grow up, because the similarities between my mother and I were comforting, were a dose of her, as opposed to the stereotypical teenage grimace at any familiar resemblance.

I am sitting here in the eco-lodge, fresh solar made Xosa bread and veggie sausage brekky on the way. Mosaics and murals and drift wood chandeliers are above me. It is a rainy day, a rained in day, a day of rain, and the sea is visible just outside the dripping and salty window. There is local jazz playing, and this morning, everyone is slow to wake. We have bi passed the paraffin-powered showers in deference to the water shortage and our own cozy laziness. Need I say more? I am happy.