The remnants of Hurricane Harvey fell as cooling rain in my neighborhood.  I watched it pelt my bougainvillea, the flowers fluttering under the weight of fat raindrops.  It was hard to enjoy it while knowing how much destruction this weather had caused, ruining great swathes of cities and drowning our neighbors to the south.  But I did.  I ate a bowl of hot soup, the window open, the breeze shooing out the stale air, filling the apartment with its sweetness.

I would gladly suffer more heat and humidity if it meant that the devastation hadn’t happened.  I expect August to be unbearable.  I expect in September for the summer to linger and sweat us — to live in air-conditioning and complain.  But this weather arrived.  Unbidden.

I scrape a small donation from my small budget for the hurricane victims.

Then I go out and enjoy this undeserved gift of rain.