Slip Into Rain

And where will I find this,
perfect and wondrous?
…I slip into rain,
slip into rain.”
–Karen Peris, “Green Bus”

    The first time she was only a toddler, barely even walking at all. Her mother had set her down at the foot of the porch stairs as she rushed across the lawn to take down dry laundry from the line, as an early summer thunderstorm began to spatter fat drops. As the first few struck her, Jillian used the bottom step to lever herself up on pudgy legs. Borne on a gust, a sudden spray of rain swept the yard, just as she took an unaided step toward her mother.
    And there she was, on an infinite white beach. She remembered this moment all her life, as with other early memories, like a fragment of a dream. Nothing moved on the beach but the steadily falling rain, obscuring the distance in every direction: the gentle surf, the wavering line of damp pale sand, the curious trees inland with delicate stems and jagged fronds.
    It was unspeakably beautiful, flawless, in the way only a dream can be. The sort of dream that has imprinted as an indelible image, when it isn’t really even the image that matters, but the emotion that inexplicably blossoms up from nowhere knowable, unfiltered by actual experience, a feeling which can never be shaken off.
    Then she heard her mother’s voice calling and turned back, stumbling against the porch and falling backwards into the grass on her small rear, and began crying. Whether the tears were prompted by the unexpected bump or the sudden loss of heaven, would have been impossible to say. They were not distinguishable to her.
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