Love and Rain Kate Szambecki
In September of my fifth grade year, I started going to a bluegrass festival with my best friend and her parents. They were a part of a group of college friends that went every year, bringing all of their kids with them. We all knew each other already (the kids, that is) from church or school, and we would race around the campsite or the concert venues, playing tag or frisbee with minimal supervision. It rained for two days straight when we first arrived, and the air became perpetually heavy with moisture. I never minded. It enveloped our little camp so that each time I came out of my tent the smell of damp air and last night’s campfire mingled together to greet me, a gentle whisper. It was my dream, to be surrounded by rain and music and my friends and the stars, but the most important part was the boy. I knew him already and I also knew that this would be the first time we’d see each other outside of school. When I arrived he was in the middle of a tag game with the rest of the kids. It was one of those moments where the person in your mind is suddenly there, right in front of you, in the flesh. He materialized and tapped me on the shoulder, a smug smile gracing his lips, and before I could say a word he was gone again. The tag game didn’t cease until night came and we all sat on folding chairs and bleachers at the main stage. A band I had never heard of was playing. The adults told us that we had to sit, at least for the first few songs. We had to be respectful. He sat next to me. It was the same thing—one minute, he was real only in my mind, the next, he sat inches away. And the first song began. We fell in love to the sound of a mandolin. We fell in love in that smoky, damp air and on the dewy morning grass. I don’t remember a word that we exchanged but I know that those September evenings marked the beginning of my first love. The next year when we went, we were “dating,” and we held hands on the bleachers. We sat and had some of our first real conversations around the fire, late into the night. Sometimes we just sat, his fingers plucking lazily at guitar strings and my eyes trying not to linger on them. But that smell was always there. Every time I step outside in late spring or early fall and the air is damp and cool, I think of the festival. And every so often, someone has lit a campfire nearby or even just smoked a cigarette, and the added smoky tinge forces me to pause. I stand, inhaling, trying desperately to take myself back to that time, that place, for as long as I can. My chest aches with what could have been. It’s as if the air around me is urging me to fall in love. And if the breeze hints of rain or the grass gently grazes my toes or the faintest hint of smoke floats past me, I consider it.
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