Rain For Breakfast

I ate rain for breakfast with a side of pumpkin doughnut, Yuban cold brew and a hard boiled egg. I ate sitting on a large rock at the jetty while it rained on me. It occurred to me that this was my first breakfast with rain.

No one was around. No gulls, either.

I finished breakfast and moved off the rock and headed south down the beach.

The storm had demolished the big fort. On my most recent visit, several days ago, I discovered that someone had tagged the fort with red spray paint. This was unprecedented in my fort building experience. I thought about the kind of person who would bring spray paint to the beach, write something with an urban sensibility that only he or she understood, and something that also misspelled the word “painter” on purpose, I presume.

I looked at the tag for a few minutes. I could have gone either way with it, or five ways at once, depending on how the wind blew.

The tag would have made for a great classroom debate in a high school social studies or creative writing class. I used to lead those kind of debates.

At least the tagger took the can away. The Rolling Rock drinker did not.

Rain picked up and sluiced my mind for nuggets of memory. I was thinking about a recent discussion about origami, recent golden thrift store finds of desert boots hand crafted in India and groovy stationery and flower power post cards, recent reunions with some truly incredible people who believe I still have something to offer in life, and a job I recently applied for: Mortuary Transportation Assistant. (What a band name!)

I want that job. I want to handle the dead and drive them around. I’ll probably adopt one of their dogs.

My thoughts drifted to a conversation I overheard in a junk shop. A couple from Cape Meares transplanted from California were tired of rain. This was their third October and their last. I smiled a crooked smile hearing that. The Rain Mortuary Transportation Director had done fine work on behalf of Oregon.

I pulled out an empty flask from the pocket of my pea coat. I collected a little rain in the flask. I would add it to the soup simmering at home. Rain for lunch and dinner, too,

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