I live in a place that received 18 inches of rain in 24 hours, flooding homes and unearthing bridges.  But today I’m in the dry country (which was once as rich as the fertile crescent), where the hills are brittle in summer and winter rains are counted in minute increments.  These ‘hundredths’ are celebrated by my father with hoots and wallops when his discerning eye is counting the thin black lines of his sophisticated rain gauge.

It’s still raining and he’s registered a significant reading – “that’s damn near an eighth of an inch!” – and he’s out there in his black cowboy hat and winter coat. He lets those drops (not so large in my tropical standard) mist all over his felt hat. Smiling and smoking his cigarette, he steeps deep in the watery promise of green grass, feed for the cattle and all those springtime wildflowers he knows by scientific name.  Those delicate blooms will grow up along the creek bed, which now fills with blue and silver, rain and snowmelt colliding in currents that seep and flood the long-dried river rock.

The sound of pattering comes down on the tin roof as the smoke from his American Spirit rises to the air.  My father is quenched in this smattering of rainfall, his boots stepping lighter in his version of some kind of rain dance.