Hillsdale Rain, Sunday

It came in so sure of itself it didn’t need a storm. And it’s stayed that way 17 hours, with 17 more to come.

We forget that the urban subdivision known as Hillsdale comes post-glacial, as does the body of southeast Saskatchewan, from which Hillsdale extends as knuckle, finger or hand. Subject to wet spells, would be the polite way to put it.

But let’s be blunt: flooded basements, trunks floating, wretched sewer back-ups that stayed backed up. Pets lost, schoolwork abandoned, no piano practice for days—piano lost in the flood!

We figured out the sump pumps and plugs and for a decade or two stayed pretty dry.

It feels different now, the rain, weird climate dynamics. (Quake in California last night, for example. I’d watched a ballgame from Oakland—no sign of the quake by 10:00 pacific time.)

The runty little avenue, Anderson, where I lived for ten years as a boy used to be open space with no trees. The tallest things were survey sticks, which we used as swords with yellow ribbons, or paint can lids which we imagined as attack Frisbees. Or ourselves, but that’s another story.

Now the rain turns Hillsdale inward, clinging to bark of its own elms, canopied. The young professionals and managers, physicians, judges and football players have long ago moved to new homes somewhere else.

Nothing weird about this rain. It covers everything.