Living in Los Angeles, rain (or rather the lack thereof) is on my mind. Unfortunately, very little rain has fallen to the ground so far this season, despite predictions of above-average precipitation due to a strong El Niño.
When I was in first grade, my mother decided that I had to learn French. It actually made sense. We lived right on the French border, and playing with friends in the neighboring woods, we almost certainly strayed over the border into France now and then. We bought our vegetables and our meat from Citroën vans that came across the border on certain days of the week. In addition, my father had gone to boarding school in the French-speaking part of Switzerland near the city of Fribourg. By the time he went to university he was bilingual, and I am sure my mother had some notion that, like father like son, I should become fluent in French early on.
One of the first things my mother required was that I memorized and was able to recite a poem about rain. To this day, I remember the words and they come to mind whenever I hear rain.
Il tombe de l’eau, plic ! ploc ! plac !
Il tombe de l’eau plein mon sac.Il pleut, ça mouille,
Et pas du vin !
Quel temps divin
Pour la grenouille !Il tombe de l’eau, plic ! ploc ! plac !
Il tombe de l’eau plein mon sac.Après la pluie
Viendra le vent.
En arrivant
Il vous essuie.Il tombe de l’eau, plic ! ploc ! plac !
Il tombe de l’eau plein mon sac.
I love the sound of French, tough for me to get it right, though. And that reminds me of a German saying I heard the other day, for no particular reason:
Es ist besser mit den richtigen Menschen durch den Regen laufen, als mit den falschen in der Sonne zu liegen.
It’s better to run through the rain with the right people than to lie in the sun with the wrong ones.