It Never Rains in Southern California

But when it does...

Over the phone, I told my brother it was cold and rainy here. He was shocked. “Really? I never remember it raining there when we were kids.” Neither did I. The first five years of my life, which we spent in Santa Monica before we moved to Boulder, are a haze of days that seemed like endless summer. There was a Christmas I insisted I saw snow falling out the window, but that was an optical illusion and an overactive imagination.

We paid the price for those early sunny days when we eventually moved to Portland (years before everyone moved to Portland). As a result, I have a strong, Proustian association with rain—it’s comforting. Like smelling a candle that somehow reminds you of your life before puberty (when it all started to fall apart). But the Oregon rain of my childhood is constant, calming. It’s not dramatic. It’s just there.

Here, when it rains, it pours. A steady onslaught of water onto a city entirely unprepared for it. As it turns out, acres of concrete and sandy topsoil aren’t hospitable to an immediate influx of precipitation. Roads slick. Potholes surface. Everything looks like a Real Housewife’s face after a skin peel—raw and beleaguered. Patios are rendered useless as rivulets pour from umbrellas and pound against space heaters.

I went to dinner with friends on Monday night and we were driven inside by the rain, the outdoor tables soggy and un-sittable. Clearly they didn’t know what to do indoors, either, since the A/C was still blasting and our server approached our table bundled in what could pass for a winter coat in LA but was woefully insufficient under current conditions.

One of my friends was wearing a raincoat, which, fittingly, was a wrap gift on a TV show she worked on a few years ago. Earlier that day she ran into a PA from that show, who was also wearing the raincoat. They joked that they always thought of the show when it rained.

After two days of rain, I forgot that this city is ever sunny, even as I watched a palm tree groan under the weight of water. It’s a relief from the affront of good weather that constantly begs you to go outside and take advantage of it. Suddenly it’s okay just to stay inside, wait it out, and batten down the hatches.

On Election Day, my husband and I were leaving to drop off our ballots when my phone blasted a flash flood warning, telling us not to leave the house. We didn’t heed it, and neither did anyone else, from the look of the roads. Now the sun is beating its way back through the blue clouds that have been looming over the mountains, determined to retake its rightful place in the sky. It was nice to see it—like reuniting with an old friend, temporarily forgetting that one day that old friend will become a big fireball and blow everything up, these digital words included.

 Almost 70,000 people in this city live outdoors. One of many places to send support on rainy days!