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The last ordinary thing my mother and I did together was sit and listen to the rain
Not a holiday and not a birthday. A wet Tuesday in November and two cups of tea going cold. I have thought about it nearly every day since.
My mother Margaret died in February. She was seventy-nine, and she had been a gardener for sixty of those years, which is the only fact about her that explains the rest.
The last time I saw her properly, by which I mean the last time she was entirely herself, was a wet Tuesday the November before. I had driven over for no particular reason. We sat in her kitchen, it rained hard for about two hours, and neither of us said very much.
I have been through hospitals and a funeral and the whole business of a house that has to be emptied. The thing my mind keeps returning to is that Tuesday, and it is not even a memory of anything happening.
Why that afternoon and not another
Because it was the ordinary one. You do not know at the time that an afternoon is going to be the one you keep.
She liked rain. That is not a kind thing I am saying about a dead woman, it is simply true. A wet week meant she could not get into the garden and she would be short with everybody, and then she would stand at the window with her tea and go quiet and content for an hour at a time.
Rain was the one thing that ever made my mother sit still.
After
The first spring without her was the worst of it, and I did not expect the reason.
Rain had been hers. Every wet day for forty-odd years had included her somehow, on the phone or at the window or out in it with the wrong shoes on. Then it rained and there was nobody at the other end of it.
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What I did about it
A rain drum is a steel drum with tongues cut into the lid. You leave it outside and the weather plays it. Water strikes the tongues and they sound, one at a time, for as long as it rains.
I made one and put it where the gutter runs over. Teal, which was the colour of her kitchen door.
The first proper downpour after that, I stood in my own kitchen and listened to it, and I cried for about ten minutes, and then I was all right. I have been all right since.
It is not a shrine and I would hate it to become one. It is a piece of powder-coated steel that sits out through the wet months and rings when the weather hits it. But now when it rains something happens, and for the first time since February that felt like enough.
Anyone can play it, which was the point
The tongues carry numbers and the songbook uses the same numbers, so there is no music to read. My mother never learned and never intended to. She would have managed this in an afternoon.
It is tuned so any two tongues sound right together, which means you cannot play it badly. My granddaughter worked that out faster than I did.
If somebody you loved liked the rain
I am not going to pretend an object fixes anything, because it does not. I still have her gardening gloves in a drawer and I am not ready to do anything about those.
What this did was give a wet afternoon back to me. If that sounds like a small thing, you have probably not yet had a season where the weather stopped meaning anything.
The honest limits
Worth being plain about what this is, because the thing it did for me is not a thing a piece of steel can promise anybody.
It is quiet. Rain strikes one tongue at a time, so it is closer to a wind chime than to a drum kit. If you are hoping to hear it from the far end of the house with the windows shut, you will not. Under the run-off, from a kitchen window, you will.
The weather picks the order, not you. It does not play tunes on its own. It sounds whatever the gutter happens to hit, which is the whole appeal and also the honest limit.
It will weather. It is powder-coated steel left outdoors on purpose. Over seasons it will look like something that has been outside, because it has.
It is not a remedy. I am not going to tell you what it will do for you, because I did not know what it would do for me. It gave the rain something to do again. That turned out to be enough.
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Common questions
Does it really play on its own in the rain?
Can somebody with no musical training play it?
Can it stay out all winter?
Is it loud enough to annoy neighbours?
I am buying this because somebody died. Is that strange?
What if it is not right?
Garden Rain Drum
- ✓It plays itself when it rains. Water striking the cut tongues sounds them, one at a time, for as long as it rains. No power, no batteries, nothing to switch on.
- ✓Numbered tongues, nothing to read. The beginner songbook uses the same numbers that are cut into the lid, so there is no notation and no lessons.
- ✓Pentatonic tuning. Any two tongues sound right together, which means it cannot be played badly.
- ✓Powder-coated steel on rubber feet. Built to stay out through the wet months rather than be rescued before every shower.
- ✓Complete. Two mallets, the beginner songbook and a cloth pouch.
The wet months are the only season this is really for, and they are now. Shipping is free within the United States.
Free US shipping · 30 days to send it back · two mallets and the songbook included