Umbrellas in the Rain
“Our friendship needing no umbrellas in the rain”
While driving on Monday afternoon, I was listening to a recent Poetry Unbound podcast and there was a line in the poem that I had to go back and listen to several times over. “Our friendship needing no umbrellas in the rain...”
This was from a larger poem called “Eva Whose Shadow is a Swan” by Dunya Mikhail which tells the story of a beautiful friendship that spans the decades and the miles. The larger context of the quote was the following:
“We exchanged postcards
for thirty years before my East
and her West met in London,
our friendship needing
no umbrellas in the rain.”
As one who regularly (and sometimes obsessively) writes and sends postcards to people, this whole section resonated with me, but it was those last two lines that really spoke to me.
Our friendship needing no umbrellas in the rain.
What did that mean? In the podcast comments from Padraig O’Tauma, he didn’t spend time with those lines per se so I had only my own thoughts as I was driving along to reflect. Was there some story behind that line about their friendship? Or was it something like what I read a few days ago in The Glass Hotel (novel I’m currently reading) describing two friends an their experience in the rain...
Vincent was laughing—she loved being caught in the rain—and Mirella didn’t like what rain did to her hair, but by the time they reached the corner she was smiling too, she pulled Vincent into an espresso bar and they stood just inside for a moment, pleasantly chilled by the air-conditioning, pushing wet hair away from their eyes and surveying the damage to the shopping bags....They found a minuscule table by the window and sat there with their little coffees, wet shopping bags crowded around their legs. They’d fallen into a companionable silence, and as they watched the downpour, Vincent realized that she felt perfectly at ease, for the first time in recent memory.
In this poet’s friendship, is it like Vincent and Mirella’s? Is it the kind of friendship that where people feel self conscious about getting soaked together in the rain? Is it the kind that doesn’t matter what one looks like or the circumstances of life but simply the joy of being together?
I was still thinking of this line in the poem when I went for a short walk on Tuesday morning while in Atlanta for a few days. As I walked, I was giving thanks for the friends with whom I don’t need umbrellas in the rain and I came across these footprints in the dried concrete. They reminded me of how even though I was physically walking alone that morning that I was not alone. And then there began an ever-so-gentle rain. Just a few drops here and there - not enough to require an umbrella but just enough to make me give thanks for these dear friends with whom I have gone through life.
“...[A] true friend sticks closer than one’s nearest kin.”
Proverbs 18:24b