At last, rain. Blessed rain. Quenching rain. Cool Rain. Long awaited, wished-for, dreamt-of, fantasized-about rain. Yesterday, a rotating system departed Italy’s boot heel and ventured across the Ionian Sea to Greece’s west coast. We had intermittent showers and a lightshow in the clouds. Our morning running ended in rain, and we invented excuses to go back outside to experience cool, wet air and cool, cool rain on our skin. Today, it rained all day. Complete cloud cover, rumbles of thunder, occasional gusts from the west, the temps drifting from the low 70s in the morning to mid 60s at sunset.

After the months of unblinking sun and flesh-melting heat, today’s weather seems weird. What would be a perfectly normal, if not mild, rainy day in the Mid-Atlantic is rendered fantastic, a psychedelic side-effect of having had our brains boiled daily from mid-June. The clouds traveling across the mountains before us blend their shades of gray with the sea, raindrops on the canopy leave us thinking of rainy nights in a tent, and we are absolved of having to do anything except enjoy it.

The Greek word for summer translates literally to “Good Weather.” I suspect this term originates back in the days when ships were propelled by ranks of oarsmen, and the unspoken suffix to “Good Weather” was “- for sailing.” Once the autumn winds began, a galley was at the mercy of the sea and could well find itself blown across the Mediterranean, like Odysseus. Wise seamen and admirals knew well that pushing the limits of the summer season was courting disaster. What I find a bit disconcerting is hearing Greeks at the end of August taking leave of each with the words, “Good Winter,” as if there are but two seasons, good weather and winter. Of course, there are Greek words for spring and fall, so I think the distinction is more likely between “Holiday season” and “Work/School season” than between “Summer” and “Winter.” It’s a state of mind, not meteorology. Maybe it’s because we’re wrapping up our fifth summer here but it makes perfect sense to me. Until we meet again at the water’s edge, it’s winter.