Ever since I can remember, I've loved driving in the rain. In the rain, 
the car becomes a spaceship flying through an asteroid belt, a capsule pod 
of your own. The pitter patter of the rain on the roof and on the 
windshield is soothing, and it feels like swimming at times, a throwback 
to the days when we had flippers and fins. With the radio tuned to some 
heartrending tunes, it's a relaxing, soothing, peaceful place, away from 
the intrusive eyes of others and of the sun (as always, a stand-in for 
God) watching over us.

When I was in college, I spent a few years summering at a mathematics 
camp. During these years, when storms hit, my fellow advisor and I would 
go out chasing them, talking about the students and catching up on 
developments while finding the rain that would surround us, our bubble of 
secret gossip. The Midwest thunderstorms, of course, were legendary, and 
we went and lived the legend, torrents and torrents of rain forming a 
black hole which most people dared not enter, the circle of their 
influence moving quickly (on rare occasions, we couldn't even keep up) 
across Minnesota prairie, eventually to leave humanity behind and draw 
power from Lake Superior before finding another coast to pelt.  Most 
people fled the scene, many pulling over to the side of the road, but we 
ate it up with gusto. 

Most of the time, though, I am alone in my car when it rains, and these 
moments are just as precious. I'm quiet; I don't even have any interest in 
talking, let alone finding someone to talk to. I think about all the other 
times in my life it has notably rained -- a magical first kiss, some 
jubliant jaunts with sopping wet laughter -- and it feels comfortable to 
me, like I'm back in my own skin from yesteryear. The rain is the same as 
it was ten years ago, after all -- everything else has changed, but water 
is still water, and the raindrops still pound on the car roof. Everything 
else in life seems very far away.

The sun, by comparison, is quite a harsh driving companion. When I'm 
driving in the sun, I invariably find myself squinting, trying to defend 
myself against the blinding rays, and it's a draining, tiring experience. 
I reach sunny destinations exhausted, having just battled through endless 
sun rays, a brightness that (again) I haven't evolved to enjoy quite yet, 
the remnants of generations of aquatically refracted and reflected light 
still somewhere in my DNA. It's an interrogation, a test, the bright 
spotlight shining on me, trapped in the interrogation room that my beat-up 
Saturn somehow morphs into, no real way out, each other vehicle on the 
road an inquisitor wanting to know more. During these times, I battle, and 
I long for the rain to come back.

I think of the day, driving back from Sacramento, another relationship 
destroyed by my own general cluelessness and psychoticism, talking on the 
phone (certainly very unsafely), trying to put things back together. The 
sunny memory, with the morning sun lighting me up, rising, growing 
stronger, as I tried to dodge it for long enough to get him before I got 
caught up in the commuter rush. The 6:30 drive, half dead from the breakup 
and half dead from the poor night of sleep, leaving just one quarter of 
me, struggling to get home before it evaporated in the waxing heat of 
another summer day.

I managed to make it, just barely. And so it happens every year; I endure 
the summers of sunlight in California, praying that the rains will come, 
and just when I think it's later than usual for the winter deluge, it 
starts, another annual miracle, time to relax, at long last.