Rain everywhere

For more than a week now it has been raining. “Is there a storm?” I ask my friends who know I ignore local media. “No,” they say, “it’s something they call a ‘low pressure area’ or a mild depression.” Then they wink and we all laugh.

I love rain, water falling from the sky in huge drops that loudly pitter-patter on my tin roof. Rain jazz, I think, as I wake up in the middle of the night and hear the music. This is typical August weather: rainy, dark, windy, richly melancholic. I love it.

It reminds me of when I was small and I would awaken to the closing of windows in our old house.

“No school today,” my mother would say, “it’s signal No. 3.” I would be quietly delighted, would stay in bed, listening to leafy branches beating steadily against the window, hearing trees snap and thud noisily to the ground, shivering at the whish and whoosh of the wind through our garden.

For two Sundays now it has been raining in the Legazpi market. Always the rains come as a surprise. The tents there are old and patched with silver duct tape. Over the corridors blue waterproof fabric is tied. Then when it rains suddenly you hear all sorts of noises — the pelting of the rain on the tent roofs, the strings that tie the blue fabric to the tent’s frames give out a weird tearing sound that makes you look up, puzzled. Then suddenly it rips and torrents of water fall to the ground.

I have learned what to do in the market when it rains. Immediately I call my driver for help. My paintings are watercolors; I send them home to avoid having the water ruin them. I ask him to bring plastic bags for my books. Then my tent mates — Sunny, Raymond and Lina — and I look for one to stay in that’s at least more comfortable than where we are. Our tent is at the low end of the parking lot. My table and chairs sit where it floods the deepest. When my feet begin to feel very wet, I know it’s time to move.

The tent in which we choose to wait out the rain is right across ours, maybe 10 steps away, where tables are for people who want to drink coffee, eat lunch, hang out. It’s called the Artist’s Nook. We stand or sit there and watch the rain and the bustle of activity. Men who work there walk around wearing plastic hoods and carrying knives or scissors to stab holes in the blue cloth. This is to prevent the cloth from tearing and wetting the people who are eating or sitting, the visitors huddled with us during this very strong rainstorm.

Inevitably the rain falls for maybe 20 to 30 minutes and then it stops. People go to their cars. The flood around my table and chairs subsides. The breeze is light and cool again. Hey, you can talk again, laugh and joke the typical Sunday way. Or if you’re there to shop, you may walk around again.

Oh, sure, I get frazzled when it begins to rain. But when my paintings are home and all the rest of my stuff is either covered with plastic or safe in my car, I love to watch people react to the rain. The managers of the market are in a flurry directing their men to bore holes here, there, to push up at the tent’s roofs with the long handle of a broom so the water falls out.

My peers, the other market vendors, are settled quietly in their booths, chatting with each other, standing and laughing at times, directing the men with their brooms and scissors when they come to their tents. There is a spirit to this market, I think. You see smiles even when it rains.

Yes, the Legazpi Market is improving. Every Sunday there are new vendors. The traffic is uneven. Some Sundays there are more people, other Sundays there are fewer but I know one day the traffic will even out and it will be a busy little place where you can come to chat on a Sunday morning.

The chatting part is interesting. Last Sunday I found myself chatting with a lot of people and finally ending up talking with two virtual strangers. They did not know me. I did not know them.

They wanted a second cup of coffee and one of the men said, “Preferably with brandy.” That made me smile, reminding me of the days when I would drink coffee with brandy. “You like coffee with brandy?” he asked me. “Yes. Definitely. I have a personality beyond this,” I laughed. “I am more than just a market vendor.”

Tuesday afternoon, it rains still, on and off. In between, the sun shines more brightly than the day before but it is still cool. I pray it continues this way, heavy rain occasionally, but peaceful weather overall, just a cooler temperature, a light breeze blowing. It has been raining this way for a week!

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