On Monday we wake up to a hard rain. There is a timelessness to the downpour. The year could be 1891. Water assembles in reddish-orange rivulets. None of the usual scavenger pigs, goats, chickens or dogs appear.
Ducks claim exclusive rights to the breakfast crumbs.
To stand in shelter and watch the downpour is so peaceful, so healing. A young girl from next door comes over. She often goes on errands for whoever is cooking here. I get out pencils and paper and offer her a pencil if she would make a drawing for me. She begins eagerly, but if I look in her direction she hides her paper.