Sounds and Smells

Isn't it funny where a certain sound or smell will take you?

I spent an enjoyable half-hour this morning as a 16-year-old laying in bed in the dark with the rain drumming on the roof.  Sixteen, you say? Yes. Because sixteen is exactly where that sound takes me.

We; Grandma, Grandpa, Mom, Sister, me, were living in Northern California. No, not San Francisco. In my world San Francisco is just a bedroom community for LA. I mean God's country. And there's six hours of driving north of San Francisco before you begin to enter its southern edge.

We'd rented the Brown House on the Corner and I finally had my own room. It was on the second floor. This was one of the very few times I didn't share a room with Sister. It was tiny and purple and I loved it. Mom and Auntie had painted a purple iris on the wall. It had a half a closet stolen from space above the adjoining staircase. I mean a half-closet. It began at waist-height and ended just over my head. Maybe two feet wide. There was a small window overlooking the hip roof of the first floor. And the whole house was roofed in tin.

Sometimes I'd wake up at night to the thundering din of rain hammering down just outside my window. I never minded. I'd lay in my warm bed in the dark and think my 16-year-old thoughts and feel safe and cared-for.

The Brown House on the corner. With a tin roof. Upstairs in a tiny purple room. In a warm double bed. In the soft darkness. Where does the sound of rain take you?