The rain began in B.C. Sunday evening and has stalked me with varying intensity all week long. Today is the first sunny and mildly warm day since leaving Penticton at noon last Sunday. It is more than welcome and I am attempting to soak my soul in its rays before the rain returns tomorrow.

When I was teaching 7th grade language arts one of my favorite authors to introduce to the kids was Ray Bradbury. His prose is descriptive but not flowery and young people love his odd and quirky takes on the future. 

One story in particular was always a favorite, All Summer in a Day. Originally published in 1954, the story is about Venus. Bradbury chooses to make it a place where it rains constantly. Heavy, driving and mind-numbing rain falls without let up but for a single day every seven years. The rain is so persistent that the children in the classroom where the story is set can’t even remember the only time in their lives when the sun did shine. Several of them don’t even believe their teacher that the sun will shine again though she has been prepping them for a day outdoors in the light.

Only one little girl, Margot, believes in the sun. Alone of all the children she was born not on Venus but on earth. She remembers sunshine and talks about it and has been so badly traumatized by her move to her soggy new environment that readers realize that if she doesn’t see the sun, it might kill her.

It’s a very sad story. Not really science fiction at all but about the cruelty children/human beings inflict on each other when they don’t realize that their own pain is the root of their misery and they lash out at the most handy target. Classic displacement story.

I found a clip of the first ten minutes of the film I would show my class. I sometimes used video to hook them and would follow up with other stories to read. For Bradbury I was about half and half, reading to viewing.

If you can, see the rest of it on YouTube.

I have felt a bit more like Margot as the rainy days blended into each other like runny watercolors on paper. I am not a sun bather, but I am a child of light. I need it to maintain a more even keel.

Rob and I discussed again the possibility of moving to more temperate climes, like the Penticton area, when the time comes to leave here – and it will come sooner than we are ready most likely. Favorable areas of weather are a trade off. They are crowded and usually with people who don’t possess our same values or outlook. But I can’t see either of us doing 9 months of cold and gloom with a mere 3 off for too much longer. As proof of this, I showed him the new Sears catalog that I picked up the other day. It was for fall. They don’t even have a summer catalog for us. He groaned and ordered it away from him. He didn’t want to think about fall when we haven’t even had a sustained week of decent temperatures yet.

Living all of summer in less than 10 weeks? Not for too much longer.