Rain all day

⏱ ~3 min reading

Ulyana woke up with a plan for the whole day. She was going to go to the park with her mother. There was a swing there, a big one on chains, and an ice cream stand, and ducks in a pond.

But when she opened the curtain, there was a wall of rain outside the window. Not the light rain. Not the gentle rain. But the real rain—with a patter on the eaves, with rivers on the glass, with a gray sky hanging low over the roof.

"Mom! It's raining!"

Mom came in with a cup of coffee. She looked.

— Oh, swallow. You can't go to the park today.

— When will it be released?

"Tomorrow, probably. They said it would rain all day.".

Ulyana sat on the bed. All the joy of the morning somehow immediately softened. There will be no swing. There will be no ice cream. There will be no ducks. Grayness outside the window.

Mom sat down next to me.

— Do you know what happens on rainy days?

— What?

— The house is getting bigger.

— How is that?

— We always run somewhere on a sunny day. And in the rain, we are at home, and the house opens up to us. Corners we haven't seen. Books we forgot. Toys we haven't gotten for a long time.

Ulyana thought for a moment.

First she went into the kitchen and helped her mother knead the pancake dough. Flour flew across the table like white snow. Ulyana poured it over with a spoon, mixed up the spoons, and laughed.

Then she climbed onto the bottom shelf of the closet. There she found an old box of buttons. There were lots of buttons—big, small, wooden, mother-of-pearl, with flowers. Ulyana sorted them by color. Red. Yellow. Blue. White. Forty-six of them turned out.

Then I cut out snowflakes from paper. Even though it's not winter. I just wanted to.

Then she built a house out of sofa cushions. She dragged her doll Olechka, a blanket, a flashlight, and a book into it. Inside the cushion house smelled of dust and warmth.

Then — she sat down to play checkers with her dad. Dad came home from work early — they let her out early because of the rain. It turned out that Ulyana could checkmate if she thought about it.

Then, my mother showed me how to make cocoa with marshmallows. The marshmallows floated on top like tiny white islands, slowly softening.

When it was already dark outside, Ulyana was sitting with her mother in the kitchen. The rain outside the window was no longer pattering - it was softly rustling, like an affectionate whisper.

— Mom.

— What, swallow?

— I didn't feel like going anywhere today. Not at all.

"You see. I told you, the house is getting bigger.".

— And the park tomorrow?

— If the sun shines.

— What if it rains again?

"Then we'll find something else.".

Ulyana hugged her mother. Her mother smelled of cocoa, flour, and a little bit of rain, because she had just opened the window to air it out.

— Mom. The rain wasn't bad.

"He's just different. As it happens with days. As it happens with people.".

Ulyana nodded. She thought about the swing - and for some reason it didn't seem so important anymore. Tomorrow is tomorrow. And today is today. And today was full.