When it rains in Chapel Hill, it pours
We’re stuck in one of those ill-fated, super drenched, endlessly raining weeks in Chapel Hill. When it rains here, it comes down in these huge, heavy drops, practically uninterrupted, for an entire week or two. When it rains at home (Connecticut, for me) there’s this steady, sheet of a misty spray that comes down for a morning, or maybe the day.
In Chapel Hill, you feel the rain before you see it. The heavy air around you lights up with this electric current and the humidity seeps through your clothes and into your skin. The space around you becomes so charged that I swear you can hear it hum until this ringing buzz finally settles in your spine.
At home, you smell it first. All of a sudden you’ll notice that it smells like asphalt and dirt and pennies. The air you breathe feels earthy and briny, like freshly cut grass or like swallowing salt water. The air around you is cold and warm all at once.
When the rain starts to fall here in North Carolina, you get an impatient warning of one or two drops on your nose before the skies open up. It’s like popping a balloon by squeezing it with your hands, or like running a scissor over the taut tape on an overstuffed package. All of a sudden it’s like you’re standing in the shower or just dove underneath a wave.
The rain at home starts out with a considerate drizzle, so that you’re not sure if it’s just passing through or if it’s really time to move. You’ll notice one stray drop among the drizzle suddenly feels bigger and wetter, and then another, until they’re all around you and you know the rain is here to stay.
In Chapel Hill, unless it’s February and cold, it’s the kind of rain you don’t mind being caught up in, maybe even the kind of rain you could dance in. You’re soaked in seconds so there’s no use fighting it. Your socks are already wet through your shoes so why not just walk straight through puddles?
At home, even if it’s warm, no one’s trying to get stuck in this sort of rain. You’ll be cold before you know it if you don’t make some serious moves to get to your car/that awning/front door. You can still save your socks and a little dignity if you try to avoid turning into a wet rat.
In Chapel Hill the raindrops are big and round and juicy, and at home they’re small and hard. After the rain here in Chapel Hill, the sky lights up like it never even happened, and at home the clouds hide a rainbow that sometimes comes out to put on a show. But the biggest, most crucial difference between Chapel Hill and home, is the fact that my rainboots are all the way up in Connecticut right now.
