Prelude to a Rain Child's Song

I would have liked to have began this story by saying something dramatic, like 'The rain fell through heaven in a flurry of hatred and spite, seeking revenge upon an unjust earth and her inhabitants.' Alas, as this story is entirely true, I'll have to begin it like this:1

    There was a slight on-off drizzle falling in the town of Guilford, England on December twenty third, 1990, as a woman in her mid-thirties gave birth in a run-down hospital. She was comforted by only a midwife and her husband (who was now flirting with a nervous breakdown). The woman was (and still is) my mother, the husband my father, and the midwife unimportant in any episode of my life except my birth.2

    The rain stopped for good, at least, it ceased for the remainder of that day. No one knew it would start again some months later, but they were all expecting it. Everyone expected everything in Guilford.3

    It was a joyous day when I was brought home from that ugly hospital, marched in a sort of awkward procession up the twisted pathway and into the arms and hearts of my four immediate family members. Mom said there were five solid months of happiness before what we like to call "it" had happened. She said my sister and brother weren't jealous, instead, they were anxious. Then again, that woman said a lot of things.4

    As I came into my fourth month of living, Mother christened me (well, that's the wrong word, we're Jewish, but she certainly never Jewished me) Rain Child. She told me when it rained, I would crawl over to the big French windows and and clap, giggling like an idiot. That was favorite expression of hers, 'like an idiot'. To her, the rain made me glow more, made the freckles sit better on my face. I watched the paths the rivers drew into the glass and questioned their motives, I questioned everything. My high cheek bones made my eyes almost sink downwards into the depths of my pale face and I wondered about the rain and what it was made of the way four-month-olds wonder, which I suppose is not with words but with feelings.5

    One month later my entire existence was shaken at its foundations, questioned and debated by a force much larger than me or the people surrounding my tiny body.6

    What would you do if you walked in to your infant child's room and found her asleep? Would you worry? I doubt it. 7

    Well, riddle me this: What if you could barely wake her up? What if she refused to eat? My mother was faced with this daunting nightmare, and, wondering what the problem was, and took me to the hospital two days after finding me alone in my crib with a look of unparalleled horror on my face.8

    Rain fell and steam rose from the highway as my mother rushed me to the hospital. 'Please, you've got to help me,' she pleaded with the secretary, 'I need you to admit my child right now, she won't eat.'9

    A scornful look crossed the secretary's face. 'Fine. Get the nurse that's down the hall and to your left'.10

    After a lot of fussing and arguing, I was reluctantly admitted to a cold, damp room where I was force-fed and basically uncared for. The nurses reasoned that since I was quiet, I was okay. 11

    Then when a nurse came in to give me a my hourly force-feeding, a look of pure fear infected her face. I was lying, still and unmoving, on the bed.12

    And I was a very lovely shade of bright purple.13

    The nurses fussed and screamed and brought in a huge machine to get all the fluids out of my sinuses. They finally payed attention to me after that.14

    Meanwhile, my mother had been living in the waiting room and my room. The doctors and nurses almost never spoke to her, but when she saw a man dressed all in white she swore it looked like an angel coming to deliver the final blow, the moment of truth.15

    'We've done everything in our power,' he said-16

    -time stopped. The only sound Mother was able to hear was the rain, falling at a rhythmic pace and defining every passing moment with a supreme confidence. It spoke to her, too, saying, 'Your daughter will die, grass will wither, kingdoms will crumble, but I live forever.'17

    'but there's nothing more we can do. We've called an ambulance to 18

 pick her up, and she'll be rushed to London to be cared for.'19

    The rain set the tempo for my mother's tears. There were a lot of them, too, and they fell on the cold indentation of the bed where my warm body used to lay. What if I never see her again? She wondered. They took her away from me, they took everything away!20

    As she tore the covers from my bed, the world stopped. To her, life was just a second she had to live, a thing she had to do, and she existed for her children. It was always 'one more day' for her, 'one more hour', 'one more second'. For her children, though, she thought, 'one more lifetime'. 21

    Opening her blood-shot eyes for fear they would close forever in that way, she found writing etched into the silver bars. Quotation marks could be seen, though it was difficult to read. Someone had obviously taken a lot of time to try to scrub it off, but Mother could still make it out through the tiny indentations.22

    In wild, half-inch-high hand writing was a quote from a book or some such literature she had read once. 'This is the way the world ends,' it read, 'not with a bang, but a whimper'.23

    'A whimper...' Mother sighed. My whimper. The whimper of a million childless parents who yen for the realized memory of their daughter or son.24

    She took out a small pen from her pocket she's used to sign the release forms, and etched new words into the hospital bed.25

    'So this is the way my child will die, not in her unseen sun, but her beloved rain.'26