The world always seemed quieter whenever it rained, as if everyone remembered something at once.
I’ve loved the rain for as long as I can remember.
As a child, I would sing “Rain, Rain, Go Away” without really meaning it.
Somewhere in high school, I stopped singing it altogether.
Perhaps because I realized I never wanted the rain to leave.
Growing up in my hometown, rain was never a rare visitor.
The first showers of April often arrived with thunder and lightning, announcing the beginning of another season.
By June, the typhoons would come, one after another, staying with us until the year quietly folded into December.
Rain wasn’t an interruption.
It was part of growing up.
When I was in high school, I walked to school every morning.
Fifteen to twenty minutes.
Usually alone.
I liked arriving early—early enough that the classrooms were still empty and the campus had yet to wake.
Sometimes I would wait at the roadside kiosk.
I listened to music.
Read a few pages of a book.
Studied.
Wrote.
Or simply watched the morning unfold.
If it had rained the night before, the muddy roads would cling stubbornly to my slippers.
I hated the wet soil against my skin.
But strangely…
I loved everything else the rain left behind.
The cool air.
The scent of damp earth.
The sound of water striking the roof.
The distant rumble of thunder.
The sudden flash of lightning across an endless gray sky.
With sentimental songs playing softly through the FM station from the neighboring province, I would let my imagination wander farther than my feet ever could.
Sometimes I imagined stories.
Sometimes entire conversations.
Sometimes lives I hadn’t yet lived.
Looking back, I realize I spent much of my childhood living inside my imagination.
And perhaps…
I still do.
Whenever it rains, the world seems to lower its voice.
The hurried footsteps become slower.
The roads grow quieter.
Even the sky feels as though it’s asking us to pause.
Nature takes over the conversation.
The wind whispers.
The rain answers.
And somehow…
Everything else becomes easier to hear.
I’ve always loved bright mornings and golden afternoons.
Yet there has always been something comforting about gray skies.
The mist gathering on windows.
The steady rhythm of raindrops.
The way storms make the world feel both vast and deeply personal at the same time.
People often ask why I love the rain so much.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a complete answer.
All I know is that it has always carried memories back to me.
It reminds me of running outside with my sisters, laughing as we let ourselves be soaked without a care in the world.
It reminds me of stretching our hands beneath the roof’s edge, waiting for the first icy drops of April rain.
Sometimes tiny hailstones would fall.
We’d catch them in our palms before quickly placing them on our tongues, laughing as they melted away.
Those moments felt like miracles then.
Now they feel like memories I wish I could visit again.
The rain also reminds me of our old house.
The wooden walls.
The dirt floor.
The sound of wind slipping through every gap.
Whenever my father traveled to Roxas to deliver our harvest or buy groceries, my mother stayed behind.
If heavy rains came, she would dig small canals around the house so the water wouldn’t flood our home.
My sisters and I watched quietly as the creek below swelled higher and higher during storms.
Sometimes we stood on the table, watching the water creep closer.
As children, we didn’t fully understand the danger.
We only noticed how cold the wind felt.
How loudly the galvanized roof rattled.
How tightly we stayed together.
Life was humble.
Simple.
Beautiful in ways I only learned to appreciate after it was gone.
There are days when I wish I could return to that little house.
Not because I long for hardship.
But because I miss the innocence that lived there.
The version of me who believed storms were adventures.
Who measured wealth in laughter.
Who found joy in a handful of melting hailstones.
Perhaps that’s why the world feels quieter whenever it rains.
Because rain has a way of washing away the noise of the present until all we can hear are the echoes of where we’ve been.
I’ve always thought that the world’s a little blurry.
Maybe that’s because memory isn’t meant to be perfectly clear.
It’s softened by time.
Colored by love.
Blurred by longing.
And every time the rain begins to fall…
Some part of me quietly finds its way home.
