In the Rain

When I woke up this morning, the apartment was dark and moody, cozily and quietly separate from the rain pouring down outside. It was such a morning for staying in (says the girl who wishes she could stay home every day, I know, I know), and I would have loved to light a candle on my desk, let my fingers plod through the day on my laptop in a little sphere of candlelight, alone in the dim bedroom.

Instead, I picked a comfy dress and leggings, pulled on my tall, red galoshes and my trench coat, and walked to work in the storm. It was fairly warm out, and kind of nice.

When I turned the corner of the Modern Languages Building, I saw that the fountain, which was uncovered last week, was full of water and fully functional, sending streams of water up even as so much rain was coming down.

The fountain brought a thrill for summer, and a wistfulness for the first summer I spent here, in Ann Arbor. The summer of the Krankenhaus, when I read histories of Europe in the sun on the Diag and spent sixteen hours a week in a Spanish classroom in the MLB, eating lunch outside under the bell tower every day, dreaming of all the countries I would visit once I lived in Germany.

Now, I have three jobs and little time for lounging on the lawn, and I sometimes think that if I could go back, I would have just begged the rest of the rent money from my parents and not borrowed those few thousand dollars for intensive Spanish from the government. I haven't paid them off yet. But I would also love to have that summer schedule again. Learning a new language is a game I love to play, and summer is a time for openness, exploration, and freedom.

When I sought out a window this afternoon, I found blue skies and sun. I'm excited to walk home.