"Without You"

Silent, standing at the window, she sees.

Wind rattles the trees and dry leaves find corners to clutter.  Some escape and form a whirlwind of red, yellow, and brown.  The leaves spin and dance before her eyes. 

All sorts of things abandoned by people or by nature blow across the front lawn of a house, our house, the house of our story.  Old, almost forgotten, it is no longer a home; it is the center of a man’s memory.  The house waits, shuttered.  It speaks one last time in the dreams of that man, a man who is the last of his line, alone.  He hears the voice and decides to return. 

The street is empty.  The wind continues to blow.  She steps away from the window and now there is no one to bear witness to the slow decay of an empty house.

 

Later, colder, an expensive black car arrives and pulls neatly up to the curb.  The car is dirty and there is a small dent on the passenger side.  He climbs from the car and leans on the door, looking at younger houses that line the street on both sides.  After a while, he closes the door.

The girl hears, and she steps to the window.  Her hand moves a curtain and the movement catches his eye; the round white of her face fills the corner of one pane.  Ten, he guesses, before turning away and severing their connection.

He unlocks the door with the single key that has been in his pocket for the entire trip and enters the house.  She watches from the window.  So young, but she notices that he held nothing -- no bag, no clothes and still somehow she knows that he will stay in the house.  In her house with the big windows and one of those funny hanging lights in the middle of a big, empty room.

And she is glad.  So young, but she knows that some great thing is drawing towards its end and something new is about to begin.

            Gasping then releasing a big breath she hadn’t meant to hold, she lets the curtain fall and steps away from the window.

           

Severin waits for the last sounds to die and gives the house a chance to acknowledge his standing there.  A quiet kingdom covered in dust sulks before him. 

The floor vibrates with each step.  He can still hear the door slamming shut, harder than it needed to be.  (Someone, long ago, had hated that.  Who had hated that?)  More vibrations move through the air, from voices no longer there.  In his mind all of these sounds meet like waves crashing and retreating, canceling each other in a senseless, chaotic rote. 

“No more noise,” he says aloud, and the empty house swallows his words.

He stands at the center of a large, formal room.  The wooden accents and molding rap around the walls in a thin, dark line.  He turns and sets his senses spinning. The single, thin strip of wood becomes the equator.  He is standing at the center of the world.  There is dust beneath him.  A chandelier hangs above him.  Two large windows that never open allow light to spill like water across the floor.

 

Beyond a swinging door is a kitchen.  What horrors!  Severin twists the faucet and watches the water run, then decides never to look into that sink again (and keeps his promise).

 

Two other rooms give shelter to a crowd of hooded refugees.  Chairs, a chest-of-drawers, an empty bookcase.  A grand table with legs as thick as his.  He pulls sheets aside amid swirling clouds of dust and drags the tarp away from the table.  When the recognition stirs something sleeping, his head swims and he staggers.  The room will wait, he decides.

Now, up the stairs.

 

Stairs.  Twenty-six of them in two flights.  He passes by the second floor to check the attic.  All of it must still be there in the neatly piled groups of boxes.   He can sense that there is an order to what he sees before him and vows to do things the right way.  “Nothing will be neglected.”

His own voice startles him inside of this attic room.  There is still a cushion on the dormer window seat, and it welcomes his long, slender body.  Shoes off, he pulls his wool coat over himself like a blanket and is asleep almost at once.

 

Later, the sounds of voices, laughter, a heavy skipping tread on the stair.  He opens his eyes and the room is glowing in starlight.  The dusty boxes seem covered in snow.    Severin’s eyes close and he sleeps again until morning.  Waking, he finds that cramped quarters and cold air have taken their toll.  Every muscle is taught and stiff; his bones protest each movement.         

Unfolding himself like an old metal chair, one rusty section at a time, he rises to his full height and surveys the space before him and decides to begin.

 

Boxes open, the attic belongs to him, the first space to live again.  Hanging bulbs add warmth to the thin December light coming through the windows.   Kneeling, he finds the snow globe and lifts it just as the ancient bell rings below.

He opens the front door and finds the girl from the window standing on the top step.  “This is my house,” she says.  Then she smiles and reaches out with a pretty little hand.  Fingers with purple nail polish take the snow globe from him.   He feels alive, almost happy.  He realizes that she is waiting for him to say something but nothing immediately seems appropriate.

“That’s what I like to say.  This is my house.”  Her smile broadens.

He reclaims the globe and offers what he considers a stern look.  “It’s not.  It’s my house.  My family’s house.” 

“When?”

“Now.  I mean, always.  It’s always been in my family.”  The words don’t sound convincing.  He feels bullied, aware that he is losing some type of strange battle with a little girl he has never met before.  Unable to meet her gaze any longer, he looks down and turns the globe.  After a moment, he rights it and they both watch snow fall.  He remembers being fascinated with the object, a tiny sequestered world, as a boy.  The little church covered in gold paint had seemed so peaceful beneath the powder.  He remembers wondering what it would be like inside that church, looking out through the window and then again through another piece of glass.

“I’m Talia.”

“Severin.”

Talia giggles the way that girls do when they are older than their age but no one has time to notice.   Her face becomes dark.  “That’s a strange name.”

“So is Talia.”

She crosses the street and he watches her climb the first few steps leading to her front porch.  The front door is white with blue trim, the same as the rest of the house.  He closes the door behind him and retreats, sinking into the darkness.  Stopping in the center of the great room he turns and notices three sets of tracks: two from the day before and these latest imprints.         

The house is silent and so is he.  The snow settles inside the globe.

 

At noon, real snow begins to fall from the sky and he watches it through the two windows that never open.  Inside, the air smells like a pine forest.  The floor is clean.  The water in his found bucket is ink black.  Severin looks down and sees the ancient oblong sponge floating just beneath the surface, a giant eye in a witch’s cauldron. 

The sheen on the floor matches the wet surface of his skin.  Cold air is beginning to make him shiver.  He looks from side to side, wondering what has happened to his shirt.  Still on his knees, he looks through the window and watches the snow fall.  When he rises, two or three parts of him creak their protest but he ignores his body’s complaint and walks to the bathroom.  He dumps the filthy water into the toilet and then walks back through the house and climbs the steps.

The other floors are an embarrassment now, a gloomy contrast to the polished wood below.  Severin smiles at the thought of scrubbing the house from top to bottom.  It is quiet work.  The kind of work that he loves.

Three projects already begun: the unveiling of furniture, the sorting of boxed belongings, the cleaning of floors.  Pandora’s box, he muses.  May as well start several more. In a closet, folded and wrapped in plastic, he finds a sweater and pulls it over his head.  (The smell of mothballs comforts him.  His grandmother used to throw them everywhere.)

He tucks the wool into his pants to trap the heat from his body.  His wool coat will keep out the snow.  It waits for him by the window, last night’s blanket cast aside.

            The front door he shuts behind him and he thinks of locking it but doesn’t bother.  He climbs into the car and tosses an old phonebook from the house onto the passenger seat.  Then, he starts the car and pulls silently away from the curb in the virgin snow.  The streets are empty.

            He is gone for hours, making myriad stops, buying things, setting appointments.   He has made up his mind to bring the house back to life.

 

            The great room becomes the heart of his efforts, the center of a locus of points.  Separate attempts at cleaning and restoration radiate from this cavernous space.  As buckets of compound, patching material, and canvas drop cloths fill the room, echoes begin to fade.  Looking up he sees the metal filigree of the ceiling and stretches a hand toward it, toward the metal flowers embossed on the ordered squares so far above him.

            Someone (an old man, but which one?) had told him years ago that he “didn’t know how to work” and “couldn’t get nothin’ done right.”  The words had bothered him then.  They had returned unbidden, over and over again, during the first few days of work in the house.  “Shut up,” he says aloud.  He is tired of hearing the voice.  “Shut up.”

            Electricity arranged for before arrival.   Water and gas arrived together, twins, on his fourth day after arrival.  The heat works in scattered sections of the house, but the open basement door provides the most reliable warmth, a gift from the ancient furnace and duct work.  Knocking, hissing, and rattling alert him to changes in the heating status of each room.  A pattern of creeks above him brings back the memory of waking up, shivering under his blankets, his mucus cold on his face.  His father had told him to shut up when he complained at breakfast.  “Do some pushups,” he had added helpfully.

            A generous cash bounty had persuaded a plumber to replace the nightmare sink with an industrial stainless steel affair.  The kitchen thus became a third province of his reclaimed territory.

            On the second floor, the space yields without a fuss but does not interest him as much.  He follows the thin strip of ancient carpet down the hall, opening the door to each bedroom and leaving it ajar.  The small bathroom at the back of the house would require some special attention with bleach, which was fine with him.  He likes the smell.  “You’ll have to wait,” he says to the bedrooms firmly.  The window seat in the attic is serving quite well as a bed, and he feels no need to abandon his perch.  No, there is no bedroom in the near future.

            Downstairs, little fingers drum on the window in the great room.  He trots down the stairs and looks at Talia through the glass.  “Go put some shoes on!” he shouts at the glass. 

            She smiles up at him.  “It doesn’t bother me!”

            Turning from her, he heads to the front door.  “Stupid girl.”  Moments later, she is standing across the threshold, in front of him, sans coat but with blue rubber boots, and a matching scarf and hat.

            “I’m aloud to come in,” she says.  “My mother likes you.  May dad thinks you’re weird, but he likes you, too.  He says you’re not a pervert or anything.”

            “You told me that already.”

            “He’s a police officer.”

            “You told me that, too.”

            “I know.”

            He returns to a nearly completed plaster-patching job in the small front parlor, within sight of the front door and empty vestibule.  He slips a navy blue work shirt over his t-shirt and tucks it into his jeans.

            “Why did you put that shirt on?”

            “I was cold.”

            “How come you weren’t cold before I got here?”  She looks down.  “You’re not wearing any shoes or socks.”

            “I’m inside.  You were barefoot outside.  In the snow.”

            She smiles.  “I like being cold.  That is the best part about this house.  It’s always cold.”

            No, he thinks, that isn’t true.  “Fill this up.”  He hands her a small blue bucket with a wire handle.  “Use the bathroom off the kitchen.”

            “How long until it’s all done?” 

            He continues working.  “Hot water.  Use hot water.”

            When she returns he answers.  “I don’t know.  It depends on what you mean by done, I guess. “

            “Severin?”

            “What?”  The way she says his name tells him something difficult is coming and he decides to handle it by continuing to work.  He won’t look at her.

            “Are you going to stay?  Here.  You know.  Live here.”

            He looks at her.  She is so small, so young.  But she seems big right now.  He gets the strange feeling that he is standing in her house, and he owes her an explanation.  Or perhaps she is an emissary, an ambassador sent by the house to gain a better understanding of his intentions.  He notices her features for the first time, eyes impossibly large, impossibly dark, like a cartoon character.  The dark of her eyes and her hair is an affront to the paleness of her skin. 

He feels awkward, then, giving such close attention to the face of a little girl.  He becomes aware of the way they are sharing this empty, private space, and he feels uncomfortable.  He wants to be alone, feels that he should leave.

They both bite thin bottom lips at the same time.  Turning away, he bends down and applies more plaster to his trowel and continues to work.  He wants to be alone, but a distant part of himself tells him that he needs her company.

The floor creaks and the light flickers in the next room.  Outside, it begins to snow again.  Inside, she remains, quiet company as he works on the wall with his hands, patching up old wounds.

 

He finishes the first floor on a Friday.  The house snaps and twists in the cold.  Vaguely he worries about the pipes bursting in the bathroom off of the kitchen. 

New plaster coats almost every wall.  Fresh coats of paint should have made the house feel newer, but the dark colors he has chosen only thrust the house further back, a hundred years or more.  “Always out of date,” he mumbles.  A deep red, the color of wine, covers the walls of the dining room.   The thin strip of wood molding is stained almost black.  Severin finds the combination comforting.

On this day, the day that he brushes the last piece of molding with stain that smells strongly of oil, he strips away all of his clothing and leaves it in a pile by the front door.  The heavy drop cloths he uses as curtains block the light.  He can barely see the pale hue of his own skin.  Outside, the world is frozen and hard and the weatherman claims that only two days on record have been colder.

Inside, sweat begins to roll off his nose and onto the floor as he moves on hands and knees from room to room, wiping down the floor with a rag.  He wipes plaster, dirt, and dust from everything.   Bucket after bucket grows ink-black and he carries it to the bathroom where he dumps the grimy water into the toilet and watches it disappear.

He begins to think of his frenzied movements as a tribal dance, and he, the last living native, keeps the dance alive with violent, rhythmic strokes of his arms.  When he is done the walls, shelves, and floors are spotless and the entire first floor smells like a pine forest.

Then he climbs the stairs to the attic, having erased as many of the years as his effort will allow.  The second floor bedrooms fail to draw him in as usual.  Tomorrow, he resolves, he will continue hunting through the boxes that are set neatly in line across the attic floor.

Through the glass by his window seat, the world outside looks cold.  Below, he sees Talia, wrapped in hat and scarf, wearing boots, and, at last, a coat.   She is staring up at the house.  Severin imagines that she is looking directly at him.

He curls up in the window seat, still using his coat as a blanket.  Sleep takes him almost at once.

                         

He knows that an ending has begun.  He feels it coming closer as the season changes, as the cold air begins its long retreat and the frost recedes.

He watches the world from the windows that never open and sees tight winter buds begin to loosen.  Blue jays and sparrows share space with birds of brighter color.

Talia spends more time in front of her house and he avoids her.  She has not been inside for weeks. 

Severin pounds the dust from the heavy red curtains from the chest in the attic and washes them by hand before hanging them.  They are very old, beautiful and expensive, though the hardware that holds them is new, plain looking, and cheap.  He covers all of the windows and feels a sadness when the last one is covered and the first floor is plunged into darkness.  He walks back through the polished clean, moving by memory, negotiating one object after another until he reaches the stairs. 

In the dark, he slides his cold, bare foot along a small rug at the foot of the stair, then reminds himself that the rug is indeed missing, has been gone for decades.  He frowns, feeling foolish and defeated, then begins his climb.  Rhythmic creaking and a sharp crack on the ninth step help to settle him.

Light on the second floor is at first a glow and then a path that leads to a large window at the top of the stair.  It is uncovered, the window, and a tree out of memory dances in time with the winter wind.  He watches and is pleased that this mental picture matches the actual view outside his window. 

“I like that tree, don’t you?” says the voice of a girl.

“Yes,” he replies.  “It needs a rope swing, though.”

“You can’t put a rope swing in the front yard.  It doesn’t look right.”

“Why not?”

“It just doesn’t.  And mom and dad both said no.”

He shrugs.  He hadn’t listened then; he’d stretched a thin rope, the only one he could find, from a branch that came just close enough to the window.  He gave it a shot, swinging out over the grass by the front steps.  He had fallen and they had broken, his arm and the branch together, in one tidy little effort.

“I don’t care how it looks,” he says now.  Turning from the window he walks to the small bedroom at the end of the hall.  He opens the door and sees the same sewing machine in the same place.  He wonders if his body could still be made to fit underneath.

For the rest of the day he tidies and straightens.  Moving from room to room, he pulls boxes out into the hall.  A small pile of cleaning supplies from his first peremptory cleaning lies waiting in one of the rooms.  Two rolls of paper towels, a rag and a bucket, and a bottle of glass cleaner sit forgotten.  There is already dust on the bottle of cleaner.

Night comes and Severin continues his work.  He pulls away his clothing one article at a time.  The frantic movements of his sweeping and scrubbing generate molten, metamorphic heat.  Finally, he carries the boxes from the hall up the stairs and into the attic.  There, he creates an elaborate scheme of organization that resembles a constellation.  It covers almost the entire floor of the attic.  Tomorrow, he will accomplish what he has been avoiding for weeks. 

He works by the light of a single bulb hanging from the ceiling.  When dawn arrives he peels away the last of his clothing, filthy with dirt and dust and smelling of glass cleaner.  The clothing drops to the floor, making a sound like a wet towel.  Beneath the coat that has served all along as a blanket, he curls into a tight ball and clutches the snow globe he found at the beginning of his explorations.  The glass surface of the globe is smooth and cool to the touch and it makes him remember something happy from as far back as his mind can go.  He holds it in both hands.  So tired, he smiles as the globe and the memory find the same space and intertwine.

Severin sleeps, and he dreams.

 

Outside, the morning is beautiful and clear.  The brown, dry leaves of last autumn, held together by small ice crystals, have thawed, and now they rustle with the breeze.  This is the sound that filters through the attic window and lifts Severin from his sleep.  He becomes aware of the light and a smell that makes him think of spring.  He wonders if anyone else is waking up and thinking the same thoughts.  Does the light seem pure and promising as it strikes tinkling spoons in cracked, enamel coffee mugs?  Can anyone else smell the leaves and the soil ready to bring life back into the world?  Or do the sounds of talking and morning radio shows and the smell of breakfast keep the world at bay?  “It’s all the same.  It’s starting over.”  He startles himself awake with his own words, and he casts aside his coat. 

The cold of the attic makes his naked body tingle as he rises to his feet and reaches down toward the pile of clothing folded neatly by his window seat.  Then, the chemicals in his brain shift and offer him a different awareness, a stark realization of the world as it exists outside of his nighttime mind.  It is dark outside.  There is no sound of leaves.  In the attic, it is cold enough for him to see his own breath.  No sound, of coffee spoons or anything else, reaches his ear.  Downstairs, there is nothing except empty rooms and some old furniture. 

“Oh,” he moans, understanding.  The dream decays like the final note of a lone cello.  An act of biological mercy brings another wave of weariness over him, and he resumes his fetal position under the winter coat on his makeshift bed.  Severin is sleeping again before he can consider the tears that are streaking down his face.

 

When his eyes open, he sees soft light that comes with the earliest part of morning and knows right away that he has slept for a day and more.  He rolls off of the window seat and stiff legs nearly buckle beneath him on the way to the bathroom.

Severin fills the tub with water so hot that it makes his skin pink.  He braces himself on the edge of the stained enamel of the claw foot tub before allowing his entire form to sink beneath the surface.  Somewhere far away he hears the sound of water slopping onto the floor.  Wet floors used to make everyone upset: mildew, wet socks, slips and falls.  Severin doesn’t care at all.  He reasons that floods only cause trouble when things are cluttered or confined, when books and clothing are soaked or left floating in a dark place, sopping wet.

After, he lets water drip from his body onto the towel, enjoying the interplay of cold and warm air that sends eddies of steam swirling through the bathroom.  He wipes the mirror with his hand and looks at his face beyond the flawed glass of the ancient mirror.  Severin is surprised to see such a young face staring back at him.  He had expected to see an old man.  Instead, he sees a young man with a growth of wiry black hair tinged with red on his face.  Severin shaves with his father’s straight razor, wiping the blade clean in the bathwater after each two strokes.  The bone handle always seemed effeminate and unnecessary, but he has kept the blade for all these years and never shaves with anything else.  He learned after the first few bloody messes to keep the thin streak of metal keen with a barber’s strop.  This morning, the blade scrapes effortlessly through the shaving cream and stubble, and when he is done the man in the mirror has gone even further back 

in time  to reveal a boy with black hair and hazel eyes.  Severin combs oil into his hair, parting it neatly, black and white and out of date like an actor from a hundred years ago.

Clothing doesn’t seem right, somehow, but his own nudity disturbs him, so he ascends the attic stair and wraps himself in his coat.  He squats, huddled beneath a rough gray embrace of wool, and begins to empty the last of the boxes.  There are letters and pictures.  Some are in albums, many others are stacked in neat piles inside of metal cookie tins.  Severin doesn’t recognize many of the faces.  He finds pictures of his sister, his mother, his father, himself.  In a frame, there is a picture of all of them, together.   Mother and father are standing shoulder to shoulder with arms draped possessively over their two children.  He dwells on all of their faces before putting the picture aside along with several others. 

A black and white photograph shows his father in dress uniform.  He lingers over this one, too, before putting it back in the tin where he found it.

Hours later, Severin puts a small pile of photos on his window seat and decides to get dressed.  He saves a few small items, then makes several trips on the stairs until all of the remaining boxes and their contents are piled in the backyard.

He looks at the collection of old things and sits down, drawing his knees to his chest.  From the ground, he can see nothing beyond the tall yew trees that separate the rocks and weeds of the yard from the neighboring properties.  Only sky and cloud are above him.  And so he sits, waiting, and when the sky is gray and no one will see the smoke, he feeds the first armful of things he wants to forget into a metal trashcan that is older than he is.  Severin drops in a match and begins his vigil, enjoying the heat and crackling sounds.  He feeds the flames for hours, and then dumps in the last few items that refuse to burn.  These things he leaves, buried in ash, and returns to the house that is no longer his.

 

 

He spends another night in the attic, a night without dreams, and decides to bathe again the next morning in the same grand fashion as the day before.  He slips one last time into the warmth of the claw foot tub.  The bathroom is bright, glowing with early spring light reflected off of clean white tiles. 

When the water no longer gives off steam, Severin rises, leaves the tub, and stands once again before the mirror.  He shaves and trims his wet hair with a pair of scissors.  When he is done, he cleans the sink, empties the garbage pale, and removes all traces of himself from the bathroom.  When he walks out he catches a final glimpse of himself in the mirror and sees the face of a little boy.  It is a good face for beginnings and endings.

He dresses in the smallest of the bedrooms.  He pulls on black slacks and a new white undershirt.  His tailored dress shirt his stiff and difficult to button, but he likes the sharp pointed tips of the tab collar.  He runs the matted fabric of his thin black tie through his fingers before allowing his hands to perform automatically the tying ritual.  He straightens the knot without needing a mirror, then pulls on a black jacket and leaves it unbuttoned.  Severin is almost finished tying his second neatly polished black shoe when he hears the bell at the door below.  He puts on his glasses and exits the room.

With one finger, he pushes the curtain from the window and sees the top of Talia’s head.  She rings the bell again and looks up.  From where he is standing, it is impossible for her to see him, but he can see her easily.  Wearing his glasses, his vision restored to its early perfection, he can make out the contours of the church in the snow globe she is holding.  “Hmm,” he mutters aloud, figuring she would not have found it until after he had left.  The night before, he had climbed the wooden ladder of her backyard tree house in the dark and left the little submerged world there for her as gift.  “Doesn’t matter.”

He walks down the steps, ignoring the signature creak of each tread.  Talia is still ringing the bell as he passes the closed door in the darkness of the first floor.  He uses both hands to move back the heavy curtain in the great room, revealing one of the windows that never opens.  Then he turns and regards the room.

Severin takes in the sight, all of his careful arranging and preparation.  His eyes pass over the table and each item arranged upon it for the last time.  Who would ever understand?  Who would care?

Then he takes a seat at the table, not the seat that he had wanted but the seat that he had always known.  His seat.  Sitting in the creaking high-backed chair, Severin does the last of his thinking and calculating, letting the day slip away.

 

He leaves the house on an evening very much unlike the one of his arrival.  There are no dry leaves blowing in the wind.  The color green dominates, and soon flowers of every color will be in bloom.  Severin’s car pulls smoothly away from the curb and moments later is moving at sixty miles per hour, away from there.  The digital compass on the dashboard shows that he is driving due west, but that, he tells himself, is just a coincidence. 

“It will be waiting for you,” he says into the silence of the car’s cabin.  “When you’re ready.”  And it would be.  With lawyers and money, he thinks, you can pretty much do anything. 

Picking up speed, the car cuts a hole in the air, makes a tunnel out of nothing.  The car blends with countless other speeding vehicles all in a hurry to go somewhere or nowhere at all.

 

In the great room the tableau remains.  No light reaches into the silence behind the drawn curtains.  As time goes by, dust lands on the chairs and the table and everything on it.

 

Years later, when the curtains are drawn and the young woman and her husband laugh at the absurdity of their new house, they find everything just the way he had left it.  And the young husband (who was going bald early and loved to laugh and would be good to her almost all of the time) helps his wife brush some of the dust away from the formal place settings on the table. 

The dust is so thick that, at first, they don’t understand the shapes in front of each plate.  He shakes the years away from one of the napkins in a heavy sneezing cloud and then they both see and understand, simultaneously. 

Picture frames, expensive-looking and old, sit facing each chair.  The young wife and her husband wipe the glass frames clean one at a time and look back at the faces that are staring up at them.  There is a man in a uniform.  There is a woman in a long formal dress with metal buttons, beautiful but somehow unhealthy in appearance.  There are other faces, young and old, each assigned a seat at the table.

He looks up and begins to speak but stops when he sees her face.  The young husband walks behind her, looks over her shoulder, and sees the face of a boy.  The boy’s hair is dark; his eyes are light.  The eyebrows, slightly raised, combine with an uneven smile to create an expression that belongs on an older face.  He embraces his wife from behind and takes the picture from her hands, placing it back on the table.  Her body presses into him, and they gently rock back and forth in the quiet of the room.  “We’ll get new windows in here,” she says.  “Ones that will open.”

Outside, it starts to rain.  It is a warm rain that is good for the things that are growing and ready to raise their heads out of the earth and climb toward the sky, unfurling, making something new.