On a Rainy Day

Choi Jae-jeong from Gunpo, South Korea

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I don’t like rainy days. The gloomy weather makes me feel down, and also makes my clothes and shoes wet. Another reason I don’t like rainy days is that my joint predicts the rain more accurately than the weather center, as I’m suffering from neuralgia.

But sometimes I smirk while walking in the rain. I went to school in a small town for the first couple of years of elementary school. My house was located in the center of the town, and the school was so close to my house that sometimes from the school playing field I could see my mom hanging laundry on the rooftop. Back then, quite many students had to walk for thirty minutes or even over an hour to school. Compared with them, I was in a pretty good circumstance.

One day, I was walking through the school playing field toward the house against the strong wind and thick raindrops. I was small, so people used to say that my bag walked along with me to school. For me, it wasn’t easy to walk against the rain and the wind. While struggling with the wind that kept pushing me backward, I saw a silhouette in the distance. It was my dad.

“I’ve come to make sure my youngest daughter doesn’t get blown away.”

I was confused because my dad was usually busy with work. I happily came home with him.

A few years later, I was transferred to the school in the city where I had to live away from my parents, but my dad would call me to see if I was doing okay whenever it was windy and rainy outside. He would ask me half jokingly and half seriously if I made it home safely without being blown away by the wind.

Now I’m a middle-aged woman with power strong enough to fight against the wind and the rain, but whenever it rains and the wind blows, I’m reminded of the voice of my dad asking me if I made it home safely.