On Rainy Days and Childhood

The wife and I are babysitting the grandchildren, “tending kids” as my Uncle Al used to say, on a rainy Saturday morning.  Rain has been a rarity in California this drought year but in the last couple days it’s been nonstop torrential.  The pool which was on the verge of disturbingly low is getting scarily close to the brim.  I've been expecting this rain.  I know to expect a soaker every year about this time.  You can keep your cloud seeding and your rain prayers and novenas and rosaries.  Here in the San Francisco Bay Area we have a much more reliable rain maker – the annual Chinese New Year Parade in San Francisco’s Chinatown.  You don’t got to show me no stinking rain dances here in San Francisco.  Just trot out a dragon, some lion dancers and light up a string of firecrackers and an old bearded boat builder carrying a staff and gathering pairs of animals can't be far behind.  The parade is next weekend and I have a feeling that, as per tradition, this Saturday’s storm is just a prequel to the gully washer that’s going to flood the parade route next Saturday night. 

Since I was a kid the CNY parade has been a reliable divining rod for pulling water from the sky.  It’s never cancelled but it almost never fails to be soggy.  When I was a kid; I don’t know, 6 or 7, my parents had made up their minds that we were going to go see the parade.  As is tradition, the clouds were bursting in full force but the parents had apparently decided that we were going, come hell or high water.  There was no hell but there was a bounty of high water.  We trekked from the car to the parade in the rain; watched the parade in the rain; made our way back to the car in the rain and then took the 45 minute drive home in sopping clothes.  Coincidentally a few days later mom and I managed to get a nasty cold which graduated to a blight in the lungs that had us wheezing and hacking up foul pulmonary secretions. 

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My grandson is standing at the window staring outside.  Longingly.  He's watching fat drops falling into the pool from the tall overhanging Yucca tree. I'm wondering if and when cabin fever will set in.  I don’t know that kids get cabin fever anymore.  Have video games, DVDs, computers and tablets eradicated cabin fever? 

“Do you want to go out and play in the rain?”  I ask.
He mulls it over for a moment and says, “Yeah.”

“I was just kidding,” I tell him. “I don’t know that your mom would like that.”  Truthfully I’m not sure that she would mind – too much.  She’s not averse to letting the kids take risks.  Not that going out in the rain is all that chancy.  We’re not talking sky diving or scaling El Capitan here.  Just splashing through puddles in a winter shower.  The wife, who fancies herself the esteemed family physician, would disagree – strenuously.  Any move to dress them up to romp and splash would launch a battle royal with doctor wife who’s held a firm grip on that notion that wet + chill = ill.   

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When I was a kid days like today were a godsend to me and my friends.  It meant muddy football at the local junior college.  No, not watching – playing.  With the game date set I would get into my football pants.  They weren't the regulation, short tight pants that players wore.  My football pants were a pair of torn jeans just shy of being relegated to the rag bin.  I made sure to tuck an old white towel into the front of the pants just like the pros did.  We bundled up enough to satisfy the parents and then took the mile or so walk to the football field at the College of San Mateo.  Before we left the house we were admonished that tackle football was a no-no.  “Uh, yeah, sure; no tackle,” was the patent bullshit offered the old man.  Who in the hell plays touch football in the rain?  On the way we would throw the ball and run impromptu routes in the vast parking lots. 

Once at the field any outer layers that had pleased the parents when we left were stripped off until we were down to t-shirts.  Game on.  Our little 6 on 6 teams used the entire field.  In the huddle plays were either diagrammed in the mud or described simply as something like, “go out 10 yards and cut left.” Tackling was more wrestling than actual hitting; wrapping a runner up in a bear hug and tossing him to the ground.  Games were slipping, sliding and splashing affairs punctuated with arguments over penalties real and imagined (sort of like present day pro football).   We pretended to be the heroes of our day; Bart Starr, Johnny Unitas, John Brodie, Jack Snow – all names largely unknown today. 

Our games lasted an hour or so depending on which of the campus cops was patrolling that day.  It might not last more than 10 minutes if the stern bald headed cop was on duty.  He’d get out of his car and with a jerk of his thumb end the game and send us packing.   There was a nice cop who would simply cruise by, stop for a moment and move on.  At game’s end we would start for home and suddenly notice that we were chilled to the bone.  When I got home mom would stop me at the front door, give me a critical once over, let out a little sigh and usually make me take off my muddy clothes on a little rug just inside the door; much better than the fate that awaited the kids next door.  They were stopped at the porch and made to undress before getting in the house. There was the one time that I'd gotten my nose bloodied and I dabbed at the blood with my shirt front.  When I got home the sight of mud and blood about gave mom a case of the vapors.  

If football wasn't happening we might go in the fields behind the neighborhoods and play army.  We pretended to be Marines fighting in World War II on a rainy Pacific island.  Or maybe we'd ride our bikes down the hilly streets and slam on the rear brakes to make the back of the bike fishtail.  

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A quarter century later I guess I’d forgotten what harmless fun it could be for kids to play in the rain; splash through puddles or throw big rocks in them to make explosions of mud.  My recollection is of keeping my children indoors when the rains came.  I guess I'd been infected by the modern day malady of overprotecting the little darlings. With each generation the phobia is handed down.  Don't let them get hot; don't let them get cold; they can't get wet, or work up a sweat. My daughter experienced rainy day fun when she was in high school and played a playoff soccer game one night in a driving storm.  At the end of that game that they lost her team salved the disappointment by splashing and rolling in the muddy field.  The wife and I worried over her getting cold and the car's upholstery getting ruined.  Our daughter was a shivering, icy, mucky mess but she didn't catch pneumonia and to nobody's surprise the upholstery was easily cleaned.  

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In these days of neuroses when the deli-man wears sanitary gloves; people feel compelled to disinfect the grocery cart handle with “complimentary” wipes and tag is banned at recess is it even conceivable that overprotective parents would let their children enjoy an hour in a winter shower?  Listening to the rain slapping the window and watching brown puddles form in the backyard I have a hankering to turn the grandchildren loose outside to feel the crisp air redden their cheeks and drops run off the tips of noses; to turn their faces to the sky with open mouths to catch pearls of water.  Today’s children are far more sophisticated than we were but they’re still kids and in my mind’s eye I see my grandchildren laughing and enjoying the simple fun of running down the street following Popsicle sticks racing down a river of icy rainwater in the gutter.