It has rained for days now. Sometimes lightly, sometimes with enough determination to keep me from going out to the patio and settling into my usual place beside the puddle. In the last twenty-four hours alone, the rain gauge has collected more than enough evidence that autumn is beginning to make itself known.
A strange sleep schedule and whatever combination of cold, allergies, or general not-feeling-quite-right has kept me inside more than I am comfortable with too. I have used the time well enough. There has been paperwork to finish, advance directive resources to work on, and plenty of things that are easier to accomplish when I am sitting inside with a computer in front of me.
Still, I have noticed something missing.
I can see the puddle from the house. I can glance through the window or look through the back door and see whether the water has risen, whether anyone is visiting, or whether the shoreline looks different after another round of rain. Technically, the puddle is still right there.
But the view is not the same as being beside it.
I did not realize how much of my settledness had become connected to patio time until I started spending more days without it. Sitting outside does not stop me from working. If anything, I think it helps me work better because something in me becomes quieter first.
Even when the puddle itself is quiet, there is something about sitting alongside it that centers me. Maybe it is the air. Maybe it is the birds moving through without asking anything of me. Maybe it is simply having a place where I can notice what is happening without feeling responsible for making something happen.
Looking through a window gives me information.
Sitting beside the puddle gives me presence.
And now I find myself wondering what the coming season will bring. Autumn in Iowa has never been particularly interested in predictability. Rain, sleet, warm afternoons, frost, and even an early snow can all find their way into the same stretch of weeks, although recent years have not always looked the way I remember them.
Eventually, there will be fewer long patio days. There will be mornings that are too cold, afternoons that are too wet, and evenings when darkness arrives before I am ready for it. The season will change whether I am prepared for it or not.
Maybe that is what these rainy days are beginning to teach me.
The puddle has become more than something I watch.
Somewhere along the way, sitting beside it became one of the ways I find my way back to myself.
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