It is intriguing how sometimes a memory from the past, a lost and long-forgotten moment in time, flashes clear through my mind. Why is that moment suddenly brought to the front of my consciousness? Is it something about my current environment, physical or mental situation, which triggers the mind to retrieve that moment in time? What is amazing is that most often the memory that my mind retrieves has nothing in common with the current situation I am in.
Today I was sitting in bed contemplating how I should spend the day. It was a gloomy day, with overcast skies and intermittent rain. I was looking outside the window of my seventh floor apartment at the mountains in the distance and marveling at the greenery of this beautiful town, nestled in Happy Valley. And suddenly I was back in Sacred Heart Convent, the Catholic girls’ school I attended from kindergarten to tenth grade. I was wearing the well-ironed blue pleated skirt and the white tucked-in shirt. I was sitting in the library on the third floor, the new one with the big windows and circular tables. The shelves were brimming with new books, and I felt the excitement of being fourteen and wanting to explore and discover the worlds within those books. I was sitting at a table and reading and it was raining outside. The cool breeze carried a fine spray of rain through the windows and made the long heavy curtains billow. As that memory flashed across my mind, I felt the content of just sitting in that library and reading, enjoying the cozy warmth, the sense of security within those walls, the sense of excitement that comes with being fourteen, when there is so much left to discover about the world; so many dreams to achieve.
That fleeting moment in my mind made me realize how different it feels to be ten years older. Even the rain is different now. It means different things, it brings forth different emotions. As a child, the rain was something exciting because it brought a change in routine. The monsoons in India, ten years ago, brought days of steady pouring rain to the green city of Jamshedpur. Waking up on a rainy morning was exciting and a little chaotic. Exciting because it meant wearing raincoats, wrapping books with plastic sheets, and putting extra pairs of socks and sometimes even a change of clothes in the schoolbag. The rickshaw in which I traveled between home and school would be covered with a sheet of bright blue plastic to keep us dry and we would peer through the gaps and watch the familiar sights through a sheet of rain. Chaotic because the rain made everything more complicated in those days when we didn’t have cars for everyone. Mom and dad had to figure out how to get to work while staying dry and the extra preparation always meant they were late by the time they left the house, not in their best spirits.
For school, the rain meant rows of wet shoes and socks lined up in the front of the classroom while we walked around barefoot. It meant no PT (physical training classes), lunch break indoors and running around in the corridors without being penalized. It meant coming home soaking and have mom prepare a hot bath. It meant rows of wet clothes hanging from clotheslines in the patio, colorful wet umbrellas and dripping raincoats lined up to dry. It meant hot fried food with cups of steaming tea in the evening. It meant drawing up a chair on the patio and reading a book while curled up in a blanket. It meant feeling warm and cozy against a cold and wet world outside.
The rains in State College are different. They come and go irrespective of season. They are not like the pouring monsoons, they are an off and on drizzle that lacks character or excitement. A rainy day means worrying about how to get to work, reluctance about doing anything outdoors and complaining to co-workers about the weather. The rain is now an inconvenience and an irritant that I wish away.
Oh, how wonderful it would be to be fourteen again.
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