rainy day

it has been raining in Houston since sometime in the middle of last night.
i like the rain...the sound of it hitting the patio...the laziness it brings to the day....even the melancholy of it.        
lately my dreams have been of people from my past...long past some of them. i have dreamed of mom & dad & even the dog i grew up with, all long since dead & gone. not disturbing dreams, for the most part, just strange. i have begun the process of trying to track down my dad's military records. he was such a quiet, private man. i have only lately started to realize i barely knew him. i wonder if he was always that way or service in WW2 made him that way. what little i know about his army days comes from his mother...he neither denied or confirmed anything she said, but then he never did. how strange it seems to me now as i try to fill out the government paperwork to know so little about my dad's life. he seemed a weak man to me, but then most people seemed weak in comparison to my mom. did they love each other at some time? surely they must have or why marry at all. his mother certainly did everything she could to prevent it & to end it...even after i was born. my mother, it seems, was not the woman "she" had picked out for "her" son to marry. beneath his station i suppose or maybe it was the fact that mom was a divorcee. they frowned on that sort of thing back then. i suspect it was more that mom was not from "money" and lacked an education. what i remember most from those early days of my life is how hurt my mom was when "she" would call for "her son" without so much as speaking to mom or me. i wonder now if she ever got a wrong number...imagine it. **ring** (voice) "hello"....(her)"may i speak to my son."....(voice) "uh...i don't know lady...who the hell are you?? and who's your son??" she also use to pull up in front of our house and honk for daddy to come out. when he died...she didn't call me...i found out a week later. to say i had a weird family is an understatement of epic proportions. the fact my mother always treated her with respect speaks volumes about my mom's character. mom always taught me to respect my elders & she did it too.
there was a family legend about mom's lack of tolerance, however, for some things. uncle Bill married a damn yankee...i kid you not...that's what the entire family called her. even my mom's mother who never cussed called uncle bill's wife.."that damn yankee"... i am sure i must have known that poor woman's real name at some point. at any rate....that damn yankee my uncle bill married said something disparaging about my brother one day to mom. it took 4 men to pull my momma off her....mom was beating her head into the sidewalk at the time. i don't remember what she said about ray, but it was probably true.
my half brother ray...hhmmm..great guy, entertaining, charming, thief, con-artist, junky, ex-con (or just con), interesting to say the least. mom's first child & older than me by 16 years. he never lived with us, except when he would blow through town between trips to prison. i loved him. i haven't seen him since 1981 & have no idea if he is still alive.
i guess that's the real thing about rainy days...they make you think of things long forgotten. of places you've been & lives you've lived & the people you have known. some people spend all their lives in one place...i cannot imagine that.
 i like the rain...the sound of it hitting the patio...the laziness it brings to the day....even the melancholy of it.