Between the Raindrops

It is raining drearily in a pretty mountain town, but the weather somehow makes the town even lovelier.

Driving through a main thoroughfare one rainy afternoon in this town, one hears a familiar melody through the radio. The driver sings along, with much feeling. “…if you could only see me now…” He ups the volume, and one gets the feeling that the song is perhaps especially meaningful to him, from the way he sings his heart out. Does he sing to one long gone, the one who got away, so to speak? Or is the song just so popular that everyone knows it, including him? One tries to discern the answer by catching what one can on the rearview mirror, and does not succeed.

One hums along as the song plays, “I’ve been too long in the wind, too long in the rain…” -thinking, actually, that lovely as Baguio may be in the rain, the wind and the rain have been going on for too long these past two weeks, way too long. Too long in the wind, too long in the rain, literally. A voice in one’s head says that that’s a Kiangan joke.

But the driver is so into it that one cannot help but conclude that yeah, he sings to the one who got away, taking any comfort where he can. Looking back and longing for the freedom of his chains… oh my. He keeps perfect tune, too. Or maybe it’s just his favorite karaoke choice.

Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge keep at it with that guitar work now tugging at one’s own heart. “Just for a while turn back the hands of time… ” Oh yeah, how young was one, anyway, when these words were first sung? “…if you could only hear me now…” And who was one with?

Between the raindrops falling on a Baguio afternoon, as a song plays, there are haunting snatches of long ago times and places and faces, making the heart remember: loving arms.