The Southern Italian – Southeast Texas Rain Dance

As our prayers for heaven’s tears go (as of yet) unanswered, my family in Texas in getting SWAMPED. Where normally one would complain about never-ending rainy days, my family has taken to bragging about them.

They are so cruel.

Earlier in the week my mom sang, “We have rain…we have rain…do ya’ll?”

Grrr….

Then, my friend Angela told me, “My pool overflowed today!”

Ahuhhh…poor thing….

Even Baby Cole got in a stab when he, in all of his 6 year old wisdom said, “I don’t know what we are going to do about all this rain!”

Well…he is forgiven.

Temperatures last week reached 111 degrees, and even the seemingly useless AC, became, in fact useless. We’ve seen more than our share of Southern Italian fires erupting that have ruined our beautiful countryside. Burnt fields have taken the place of our lush green mountains, and the scent of smoke and burning trees no longer incites fear or excitement.

The lack of rain combined with the fear of the fires has taken its toll. It is too hot to go to the beach, and, to echo the words of Beaumont Boy, Mark Chesnutt, it’s too hot to fish and too hot for golf.

Perhaps all of this explains the strange dream I had last night.

I was with my friend Sognatrice, her P and my P, and a crowd of other Calabrese. We were standing in the streets near the piazza at Catanzaro Lido literally, my friends, doing a RAIN DANCE.

And, we got after it!

We danced and jumped and sang chants that were incomprehensible in both the Italian and the English language until finally….

a single drop of rain,

followed by a steady drizzle,

that erupted into an all out rain storm.

We continued our celebratory dance in reward for our efforts until I awoke.

I stepped outside to see an overcast sky and was met with a cool chill. Is it possible? Did our rain dance do the trick?

Nah…

That cloud lasted about 5 minutes, and once again, the sun is blazing down on us in what promises to be, another bellissima, albeit dryissima giorno!