Rain

The video of our granddaughter is adorable. The delightful and determined Elizabeth Holiday, age four, had dressed herself in her pink polka dot bathing suit and flip-flops (probably on the wrong feet), and wistfully stood at the living room window, singing to her front lawn: “Rain, rain, go away, come again some other day, all the children want to play, rain, rain, go away.” 

By Wednesday, the rains of June 2019 seem a distant memory, as we spent our afternoon under the hot Ohio sun, our granddaughters splashing in the kiddie pool and chasing each other around our back yard with squirt guns and shrieks. Yet a series of waterlogged images are fresh in my mind: Grandpa’s Cheese Barn in Ashland surrounded by water, I-71 in Columbus closed due to flooding, Barberton neighborhoods underwater, and the Tuscarawas River overflowing its banks in Massillon. In Canal Fulton, the Cherry Street Creamery, where we’d recently enjoyed an ice cream treat, looked like an island in the newly formed “Canal Fulton Lake.” 

When we see flooding on the news or in the paper, it’s easy to lament the loss of access to a favorite ice cream stand, or to complain about rain dampening our vacation. Yet our “will it ever stop raining?” whine has a broader impact than a momentary disruption to our leisure-time activities.

For staff at the Salvation Army’s Camp NEOSA, situated on the swollen shore of Leesville Lake, it meant watching the rising waters overwhelm the beach and creep towards the dining hall. Rainy day fun was extra-challenging this past week at Camp NEOSA.

For people like Paulette Snyder, the co-owner of the Canal Fulton Livery and Campground, their very livelihood is threatened by the rains. “Between canoeing, kayaking, biking and camping, every avenue we have to make money is gone,” she said. When your business is dependent on summer tourists, the old saying, “making hay while the sun shines” is a poignantly prophetic reminder – there’s little hay to make when the sun isn’t shining. 

Farmers are facing serious concerns, as the Cincinnati Enquirer reported: “Ohio’s farmland is underwater and unrecognizable. The impact will last even longer than the rain.” As a kid, we’d drive through farm country on Sunday afternoon car rides, and my dad would remind us that the corn should be “knee high by the Fourth of July.” Instead, as the Enquirer noted, “Standing water comes up to the knee in some fields. Plots are more like muddy swamps where the only thing that’s growing is mold and disease and mosquitoes.” Anybody want more mosquitoes? I didn’t think so.

It’s not just here in Ohio. The recent flooding in Ohio pales in comparison to the Midwest states bordering the Mississippi River. Some communities and farmland have been underwater for months. Greenville, Mississippi’s mayor Errick Simmons describes the impact: “Our flooding has been over one hundred days. We have an increasingly severe homelessness situation . . . Hopes have been completely destroyed.”

Another number stands out: at the beginning of June of this year, thirty-one million acres of America’s farmland were still unplanted. Family farms, corporate farms, organic farms – neither the rain nor the changing climate are impressed by who you are.

Two takeaways for me on this topic. First, I’m reminded of how quickly we forget what’s going on in the lives of others. We can blame our response on the rapid news cycle, but unless we’re immersed in a situation – flooding, tragedy, or loss of any kind – it quickly slips our mind as we move onto the next sound bite or family outing. It’s not that we don’t care; we’re just focused on what’s next.

We’re also tempted to stand at the picture window in our bathing suits, wishing life was different. Instead, consider the alternative: we can pull on slickers and rain boots, stride out into the storm, and do what we can, piling up sandbags, mucking out basements and being aware of our neighbor’s struggle. But don’t forget – even when it’s raining and pouring, we can still let our joy show up. When the storm passes, see what happens when you jump in a mud puddle and dance in the raindrops.