One rainy Sunday

It was one of those times that I wished I had brought my camera. Close to 12 noon today, I was dressed and ready to wheel to church when the heavens opened its (their?) taps and rain poured. So I decided to wait for husband to come home thinking we'd take the car to church. Meantime, I decided to play a few pieces on the piano. Pieces I learned in grade school and high school. New ones have yet to be learned. But how to when the piano has no fixture to allow a music piece to be propped up?

Then husband arrived and said, "let's go." I asked, "do we take the car?" He said let's just bring an umbrella. By then there was not even a shower and so he wheeled me to church. Our son followed a few minutes later, no umbrella with him.

As the mass proceeded, the winds made their presence felt. We in church felt the rain spray on us, the church being largely open on all sides unless the glass folding doors are unfurled. After some time, the ladies in brown (Mother Butler) closed the glass doors to shield the mass goers from the rain. There was a let-up and they opened the glass doors once more.

I couldn't keep my mind on the mass. The weather so reminded me of my days in Negros. To complete the flashback, I have this bad cold that made me really feel like I did when I was a child when it would rain hard and the floor on the corridor just outside my room would be wet unless the trapals (now referred to as tarpaulin) were drawn down. See the corridors were roofed but did not have solid walls on the other side. Instead grills allowed the air through. And rains too if the winds were particularly strong. As I saw the rain being blown inwards, I also recalled my grade and high school days in St. Scho because while the corridor had a solid concrete wall, it only reached so high and inevitably, rain would swish inwards when the winds were strong through the upper portion up till the ceiling. More often than not, I was sick then or had a very bad cold at the very least.

Oh for those days. Life was so much simpler then, not only because that was back in the sixties and seventies, but because of the age I was in: pre-teen to teen. Issues that had to be dealt with then were prom dates, what to wear, test scores, etc. These days, 30 plus years later, issues are graver. Illness in the family, rising costs, relatives of one's husband, etc. Receiving calls before six in the morning that didn't have to be made so early as to awaken-- the issue could have waited without any consequence. People then were so much more considerate, courteous, proper. Anyway...

When the mass ended, the rains and winds were way too strong so that only a handful braved both to go to their cars or, heavens, walk home. No umbrella could have shielded one from getting wet because of the winds. As people thronged to the inner portions of the church, away from the doors, in anticipation of the rains' letting up, I found the situation a tad ironic. There we were looking like evacuees/refugees in our parish church even as our houses weren't too far away and were in no way in danger. As people milled, the buzz of voices was stilled by the crash of glass. A frame suspended from the ledge on the second level of the church had fallen right smack on the middle aisle at the back, but as God would have it and in his wisdom and kindness, there was no one where it landed. I guess He thought "these people braved the storm to come to my house". So he spared us all.

We saw our neighbor who had brought her car. When she learned we hadn't, she offered to take us, but that would have been impossible because of my wheelchair. Too much hassle. Instead, we wangled a ride for our son who got the car and came back for us in it. Deja vu. Two weeks ago, the same thing had happened. We were stranded in church, our son went home with a friend and picked us up in the car.