For a long time, for what feels like the length of my childhood, my aunt, uncle, and three cousins would come to our house on weekend evenings where the adults would promptly park themselves in front of the TV to watch episode after episode of Chinese soap operas that my mom would rent from a local Chinese video store, sometimes five VHS tapes at a time for a single weekend. Bags of salted melon seeds would sit strategically throughout the room, as would piles of discarded shells. The only sounds would be the TV, sporadic laughter, and the rhythmic clicking of teeth opening the shells and eating the seeds within. My cousins and I would find activities with which to entertain ourselves, from computer games (Rampage kept us occupied for months; I always played George the ape) to made up ones ("Shark" was a particularly memorable invention akin to 'Tag' but played vertically on stairs). Often, our house would be full and boisterous until well after midnight.
Eventually, my dad bought a ping pong table and set it up in our backyard addition: an enclosed, glass-paned sunroom that always leaked and constantly had ants in its carpeting. I had my ping pong phase, where I held the paddle like a pen instead of a tennis racket and learned how to serve like those Asian men in ping pong tournaments, but it didn't last. I much preferred to sit by and watch my cousins play. Some nights, my dad and uncle could be lured away from the TV, and then it would be on. They played like professionals, actually quite like said Asian men in ping pong tournaments, down to the intense stare and sweaty brows after a few rallies back and forth. During these matches, I would love to sit on our old green couch with the burlap-like upholstery, the one with its rear back leg missing (or broken) so the sitter always sat slightly reclined to the left, and watch.
I enjoyed these nights even more in the rain. Water pelting the panes of the sunroom could be deafening during serious storms, like a TV with its volume on high and tuned to a channel with nothing but snowy static (do those channels even exist anymore?). Those nights were the best, surrounded by family, those hypnotized by the TV on one side and those rapt in games on the other. And the rain. All of those things, the latter especially, made me feel completely safe, sheltered from the chaos and blanketed by their company.
Years later when I moved back in with my parents during my two-year stint in graduate school, I found that I hadn't changed in this; my favorite times were those afternoons when I would be sitting on the couch working on poetry, Linda on her homework at the dining room table, my parents in the kitchen, and the tumbling rain outside.
Even just this past Christmas, as Sam and I had dinner with them, I ran to the front door mid-bite when I heard a sudden torrent of rainfall wash over the house; I knew rain like that would never last. I threw open the door and looked outside. Illuminated by orange streetlights, sheets of water undulated in the wind like curtains. Everyone had followed me over to the door and the five of us just stood there, mesmerized. It didn't even look real. I'm sure many (in Portland? Seattle? Midwest?) would beg to differ, but I thought rain like that could only happen in movies (followed by a downpour of frogs à la Magnolia, which would be kind of cool; maybe on May 21st, when the world is supposed to end or something).
And just as I predicted, the storm eased within a minute, and we closed the door and resumed dinner. But I could still hear the pattering against the window, and I still felt ever so thankful that we were all together at that moment, knowing we could stay in and dry and together, knowing that for the evening at least, none of us would have to so much as step outside.
Yesterday, due to the rain, Sam drove me to and from my Rapid Transit rehearsal, and as we pulled into our building's garage, Sam noticed that all the parking spaces were occupied. "Full house," he said. Not only the garage, I presumed, but the building as well. As we rounded the corner into our spot, I noticed that Sharon and Andy's black BMW was gone (yes, I have inadvertently become one of those hyperattentive neighbors). Sharon must still be at work, I thought. Though in no way would her presence or absence, nor any of the other neighbors', for that matter, affect me, I silently hoped that she would be home soon, out of the rain and into her house with Andy so they could enjoy the wet evening together and maybe feel how I felt 25 years ago with my family in the sunroom, how I felt as Sam, Grr, and I walked away from our rain-spotted car and back into our house last night.
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