When It Rains It . . .

This morning, I woke to the sound of traffic on wet streets, and for our downtown condo, that’s as romantic as it gets. Even though we live on the top floor of our building, we still can’t hear the rain tapping on the roof like our cabin in North Idaho. I found myself trying to remember how often I’ve uttered the aphorism, “When it rains, it pours.” Even though the thought seemed apropos of the drenching downtown Sioux Falls was getting, it makes less and less sense as I age.

The saying, “When it rains, it pours,” is often used in a more philosophical sense that addresses mounting troubles in a person’s life. However, it suits my purposes here to treat it literally. Writing about philosophy is almost as dangerous as writing about politics and, perhaps, even more challenging to keep one’s tongue in one’s cheek. So we’ll stick to what the words say and talk about the weather. Any sense that these thoughts might have existential application is purely accidental, I assure you.

We humans are funny about the weather. I suppose being mostly hairless mammals exposes us to the elements in ways that other species don’t face. The cows standing out in rain-drenched fields we saw on our recent trip from North Idaho didn’t seem to show much concern as their bodies automatically added thickness to their fur in preparation for winter. As we left Idaho, more and more whitetail deer were converting from their tawny summer coats to their longer-haired gray winter wear. And none of these automatically adapting animals seemed inclined to utter a weary, “When it rains, it pours.” But I think it was said more than once from the warm interior of our Equinox steadily making its way over freshly washed pavement toward South Dakota.

The saying is an indication of our species’ silly attitudes toward weather. We get very emotionally involved with fluctuations in the daily climate. Precipitation brings on depression unless you’re a kid, and what’s coming down is the year’s first snowfall. A sunny day is a mood booster unless you’re a farmer seeing the fortieth day of sunshine. Weather is what it is. On the surface, it seems ridiculous to get all stirred up about it. But, even Marcus Aurelius, that icon of stoicism, must have had days when the weather got him down. But is our emotional response to the weather learned or just instinct? I’m leaning toward instinct. How else would we explain the garish extremes of Parisian fashion? Thank goodness for Carhardt, or we’d all freeze to death.

Modern meteorology bolsters the argument for instinct being the root of our irrational emotions about weather. We all know what will transpire with the weather well before it happens. Now, historically, things didn’t work this way. When I grew up, we swore that a flipped quarter was just as good at weather forecasting as the nightly news. Boy, howdy, has that changed! I can scroll through my iPhone and reliably know the basic shape of the weather for the next ten days. And when it comes to today and tomorrow, I can understand nearly to the minute when it’s going to rain, snow, sunshine, or blow – not to mention how fast and in what direction. And yet, I get up and look out the window at the rain coming down and make the sad statement, “When it rains, it pours.” Go figure.

Now we come to the heart of why emotional reaction to weather is on my mind. Our timing for transitioning from the mountain in Idaho to the third floor in downtown Sioux Falls is intensely weather-related and completely counterintuitive. Before the snow flies “too much” in North Idaho, we return to the Midwest. This timing is a bit crazy because, growing up in North Idaho, I did not learn what a blizzard was until I moved to the Midwest. It makes no sense to leave the fluffy snowfalls of North Idaho that pile up on the power lines in exchange for a place where snowflakes defy gravity for miles. This insanity also includes the relatively milder winter temperatures in the mountainous northwest. But here is another situation where context matters. Our dry cabin in North Idaho requires a thirty-yard trek to the bathhouse to access the privy. This reality is clearly a three-season arrangement, no matter how you slice it. The condo in Sioux Falls is fully equipped with indoor plumbing, which works well even in the worst the Midwest winter can throw at us. Add to that underground parking in a heated garage, and you have the perfect winter hideaway this side of the Bahamas.

However, the exact definition of how much snow in North Idaho is “too much” remains a bone of contention between my wife and me. For my wife, any snow, even the threat of snow in the next two weeks, is way too much, and departure for our cozy Midwestern nest needs to happen immediately. I, on the other hand, have a strong emotional attachment to those first gentle North Idaho snowfalls. I prefer to stay until the weather shows its hand. My wife’s trump card is that our trip would be put dramatically at risk by dangerous travel conditions over the mountain passes that dot the way from Clark Fork to Sioux Falls. Even though I firmly argue that we can easily manage such challenges with careful driving and comfortable travel delays in swanky motels, she remains unconvinced. In truth, I am to blame for that. I believe that my wife is still suffering from PTSD caused by several wintertime travel adventures we had earlier in our lives. The fact that they all happened in the Midwest and not on passes in the mountains is beside the point for her. And if I’m honest, my youthful sense of indestructibility got us into several cold weather situations that were severely angst-inducing. I still think those lapses in judgment should not be held against me, mainly since we survived them just fine. However, it remains my responsibility to convince her that I’m not only older but wiser, too.

So, we are safely ensconced in our Midwestern hideaway. We’re here a couple of weeks earlier than I would prefer. But there is another aphorism that makes a lot more sense than the one about rain, “happy wife, happy life.” It is part of my campaign to convince my better half that I am indeed wiser in addition to being older.

Now, the rain outside has stopped, and the traffic is quieter in its midday pattern. Weather is a pretty cool aspect of life on our planet. I know some people get bent out of shape about changing weather patterns, and it’s good to be sensitive to those things, especially when it comes to how our choices affect the stewardship of the world. But as a species, we have survived a couple of Ice ages through our adaptive capabilities. Good sense, love of creation, and complete acceptance of our responsibility as the world’s dominant lifeform should get us through for a few hundred thousand more years. We’ll see, even though I won’t be around for most of that. In the meantime, I’m proposing a change to that time-worn saying. From now on, I will say, “When it rains, it rains.” It’s hard to argue with that and I think it would make Marcus Aurelius proud.