Allow me to digress

It has been raining a lot this week. I mean, inch-an-hour rains non-stop for days at a time. The rain comes slowly over the mountains that are to our West, headed by a front of heavy fog falling over the lush saddles and folds of mahogany, avocado, guava, jimalina, and cogan grass, and falls down the slopes. You can always hear the rain coming, its drops are bigger than those at home; they fall heavy on the big flat banana leaves, revealing a gloss that looks like plastic. Unlike the thunderstorms in the Shenandoah Valley, you can't smell this rain though, it comes so often and with such force that you don't have time to smell it, unless it shoos the sun away fast enough to send smelly steam up from the road asphalt. Advance of the rain run the farmers, flocking to their rice drying on blue tarps in the road, they bring wooden rakes and sacks, and frantically sweep and rake their precious kernels into piles and scoop, scoop the grain. Then come the children, first shy of the rain as they huddle under little sheds beside the road, waiting for it to stop. If the rain lingers, their timidity fades and the kids begin to run in the rain, some bathing, some just with a smile, playing. If I walk to the town center, there is a big waiting shed, a concrete block without walls, 20 feet by 10, where men sit all day playing native games, Damat, Chess. As if I didn't know, the same men smile every time I pass and yell, 'Nauran pa!' (It still is raining), and I reply with 'Siguro'(surely); we laugh, and I continue walking. At the ocean edge, I watch the rain mingle with the saltwater, the silhouette of fishermen sit in boats out on the flat water. Distant islands are obscured by fog and rain, ours is the only island left visible. The rain pools in the rice fields, just fluorescent green tips of leaves stick out of the deep water, the plants submerged. Rain puddles under nipa houses on stilts, children stick their heads out of windows to check the storm's progress, then disappear again inside to go back to sitting. Stream beds bloat with rivers, water buffalo just sit in their fields and wait patiently, and the big plops continue. Fog lowers, leaves glisten, we all wait.