Those beautiful, grey rainy days

Traditions often arise from things you did out of routine or necessity growing up. You probably don’t think about them much when you’re young — it’s just the way life was in your family. Eventually, your perspective changes, and things you took for granted develop a completely new meaning.

Take, for example, rainy days.

When you’re a kid, rainy days are the death of a weekend. You only get two days of uninterrupted play, so rain puts a real damper (pun intended) on freeze tag, or walking to your friend Rhonda’s house to listen to music and talk about high school crapola. They’re a drag.

On rainy days in my family, my mother, my sister and I used to get comfy in the family room, light a fire in the fireplace and watch black-and-white movies. Let it be a Saturday, or even better, a Sunday, and we would be content to while away the hours immersed in films with titles like Bringing Up Baby, Arsenic and Old Lace or The Philadelphia Story (Yes, Cary Grant was big in our house). Movies with pithy lines like, “You see, well, insanity runs in my family…it practically gallops,” were the perfect entertainment on a quiet, grey, rainy Sunday afternoon.

While my mother, sister and I were low-key, my brother and father were much more dynamic. They could always come up with something else to do in the other room.

Those days were restful and filled with laughter. Even when my father and brother were engaged in some activity, it felt cozy to have everyone home at the same time. It’s that irreplaceable familial feeling. I think that’s how it becomes a tradition — it feels good, so you want to repeat it as often as possible.

Time being ever fleeting, now I’ll get text messages from my mother saying “it’s a black and white movie day.” Wherever I am, I’ll know that the weather has gotten chilly in Colorado and she wants to light a fire. It’s been years since we’ve gotten to do it. We’re a bit scattered. That’s what growing up does.

The older we get the more we look back fondly on days and traditions like that. It’s why Nick at Nite exists. It’s the premise behind the movie Pleasantville. We don’t remember what was going on with our grades, the finances, who was dating whom — all of those details are lost to time. What we remember is how we felt sitting on the couch, laughing at the idea of an heiress and her pet leopard named Baby, with the rain trickling down the windows and my mother’s chicken soup in the crockpot.

Those kinds of fond memories are what makes us want to start traditions when we grow up to have families of our own. We want to feel that love and recreate it.

These days, with the freedom to go wherever the wind takes me and with friends scattered around the country, I can easily avoid dreary weather. There’s always sunshine somewhere, always something to do and always someone ready to let me come visit.

Yet I find myself wistfully looking forward to a grey day with nothing I have to do, and sense a desire to smell a fire burning — to keep me on the couch watching Netflix with my wusband. She’s not my mother or sister, but she’s family all the same, and we keep the tradition alive. Now I’m the one cooking the soup.