The Imber-or and I

My entire relationship with rain is sprinkled with contradictions. When I was growing up in San Francisco, I developed a fondness for the morning fog, which has the pleasant habit of remaining for a while, then dissipating. A continuous sheet has no immediately pleasant aspect, nor is the 'drought of March' desirable year-round. I have studied at St Andrews in Scotland and traveled to Newfoundland in Canada: on both occasions I found the fog and the wind commensurate with that of my own hometown. Now, after I have bought a business at Tahoe but remain in the City in the winter, my contradictory relationship with precipitation has grown stronger. When it rains in the City, it will often snow in the mountains. Many of our contracts involve removal of that same snow. The consequence of the conjunction of meteorology and my employ is that while I may suffer the sheeting rain and the treacherous invisible puddles that gather at the slopes of the crosswalks, I also profit from the more heavenly result of the rain that falls to the east of "America's Sodom" (a misinterpretation of the Bible, by the way) in the mountains where my brother and I once played. I no longer say "rain, rain, go away": not only because I am no longer a child, but also because I have come to appreciate the future benefits of a temporary inconvenience and obstacle.