Dancing in the Rain: Why it worked for Gene Kelly

 Ah, the nurturing quality of a summer rain.  When I was a child, my sister and I would don our bathing suits to tramp around in a rain strorm, our sopping hair slapping our backs as we splashed barefoot through ankle-deep puddles.  We’d toss our heads back to gaze skyward at the unrelenting downpour, letting fat drops pelt our hot, dirty faces.  Perhaps because we were raised by dysfunctional, alcoholic parents, no one told us this wasn't okay, not even with the threat of lightening strikes.  Today, I remember this as one of the freeing experiences of youth in the lush Baltimore suburb where I grew up.  Those were the days before adolescence, before my self-image got kidnapped by teen magazines that warned against going around in public looking like a drenched sheep dog.    Yesterday it rained buckets in the Denver area.  Indeed, it appeared to be raining buckets already to the south and west, as my fiancé and I gazed at the horizon from our home near Old Town Arvada.  I wanted to go for a walk.  Like Henry David Thoreau, who described his immediate environment as so full of nuance and surprise as to render travelling elsewhere unnecessary, I like to get to know my surroundings.  John, on the other hand, is a bit more reserved.  An amateur weather man, he prides himself on being able to read the horizon.  After 9 years as his partner, I should know his predictions are nearly always accurate.  But I persisted and he lovingly obliged, changing into practical shoes, locating his umbrella to embark on a walk through Old Town with me.  By the time we reached Grandview Avenue, a high point from which the dark, foreboding horizon was especially visible, a light rain had begun to fall.  He announced he was turning back.  Again, maybe it is due to my dysfunctional childhood, but I rarely let weather – or anything – deter me from doing what I yearn to do.  Telling him I’d meet him back at the house, I pressed on, flipping open my 1960s vintage umbrella as I proceeded across the Grandview Avenue Bridge to the other side of Wadsworth Bypass.  There, the houses are Victorian and irrigation water is provided via a drainage ditch that runs along the sidewalk.  There, every home has a small pump house somewhere in the yard and the gurgle and trickle of water is pleasantly ever-present.  It’s a beautiful old neighborhood, country-like and reminiscent of a simpler time, the time in which I grew up, perhaps. By the time I reached Marshall Street, my usual turning-around point, I was in the midst of a torrential storm.  Sheets of rain blew sideways, pelting my chest and abdomen, soaking my clothes.  Lightening strikes lit up the sky, and I have to admit I worried a bit about that lightening-rod of a two-inch metal tip at the top of my umbrella.  But I didn’t collapse it.  Trusty old vestige of a time when products were built to last, that umbrella never once turned inside-out, even when the wind blew sheets of rain under it and across my face.  My hair, except for the very ends of it, remained completely dry for the entire walk.  My shoes were an entirely different matter.  After five minutes or so of downpour, there were rivers of water running down the streets and sidewalks.  Like the child of 40-some years ago – bare feet slapping across wet pavement and splashing in puddles – I trudged through those rivers, joy-filled and laughing.  Like getting baptized, I was reconnecting with a lost, primal me, the Artist-Child of Julia Cameron’s creativity-provoking self-help books.  According to Cameron, most of us have a creative inner child, a child who was taught early-on that painting, drawing, writing, and other creative pursuits are the impractical pastimes of air-headed dreamers.  That child is playful but bruised; and needs to be teased out of hiding.  “Silly,” “irresponsible” behavior like tramping around in a rain storm is one way to reach that child.    Walking back through Old Town, I watched people dash from their cars to bars and restaurants, heads huddled against the downpour.  I passed a beauty salon, where all activity seemed to cease as stylists gathered at the window, doubtlessly glad they were dry inside.  Nearing our house, I passed an apartment balcony, where a young woman sat Buddha-like beyond the open sliding door, gazing outward at the passing storm.  She smiled at me and I smiled back, a connection that seemed based on a primal understanding of the nurturing quality of rain.