Summer rains are such a rare thing in Northern California. It bears mentioning, therefore that on this day, the 28th of June in the year two thousand eleven of the common era it rained substantially and consistently enough to call it ... a rainy day. I see the droplets dancing like thousands of mouse feet on the orange tiles of my neighbor's roof and dripping down like pinballs through the tendrils of the lilac bush outside my study window.

In this place of finely tuned agriculture, a misplaced rainstorm or an unseasonably cool spell always bears the disquieting potential for economic damage, which makes it harder to look at from a purely esthetic point of view; but there it is nevertheless, coolly and profoundly moist where one would expect it to be hot and dry as an oven-fresh biscotto.

I remember the summer rains of my childhood, when the hot dampness rolled and billowed and tumbled down like waterfalls, or sometimes simply seeped in like sweat. On those days the air was like damp swim towels and the sky like an empty gray beach. My friends and I would troop to the local swimming pool that, on sunny days, would be full of sunbathers and adults hoping to read peacefully on lounge chairs while their children mingled with the sun-jeweled water. There were no flakes of gold in the water on those rainy days, but we were happy with the silver skies and the deep blue emptiness that made us think of sharks and coral and other exciting things. If there was no lightning, and if it was not raining so hard that the bottom of the pool was invisible, we were allowed to swim and our games became the games of boys who lived with the water and were part of it. The lifeguards would open the deep end, normally used only for diving, and we would become porpoises and deep-sea explorers. Summer was the time to be wet and sometimes the world appeared to know it.

I have lived now for many decades on the dry side of summer but somewhere in the deep aquarium of my mind there lives an old sea-mammal memory that makes me want to dive into this summer rain and wrap it around my body.