Rain

     This morning, your fever broke temporarily, and you pranced around the room with an orange ball with spikes on it.  You trotted to the open window, and together we heard the sound of the water dripping from the neighbor’s window air conditioner.  “Wain,” you said.

     “No, it’s not raining,” I said.  “that’s the air conditioner.”

     “No more rain,” you said, though it sounds like “no ma wain.”

     “No rain right now.”

     “Bye bye wain,” you said and skipped away.

     Daddy said you heard the wind when you were drifting off to nap, and you asked for rain again.  Later I was hoping you’d sleep by osmosis, since my other sleep techniques are kind of hit or miss—mostly miss—and you said, “Wain” as you heard Tad’s nails clicking on the pavement as Daddy took him outside.

     All of the sounds which prompted your rain prayer/declaration were similar to rain but weren’t really rain, just as your word, wain, is approximate.  Then again, my goal is that someday you’ll understand that rain is the phenomena in which drops of water fall from the sky, and though I know slightly more about clouds and the process than that, I’ve forgotten most of it.  My understanding, too, is approximate.