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My mother loved the rain. After she died I could not stand the sound of it.
For a year it was just water on a roof. Then I did something about it, and I am still not sure whether I did it for her or for me.
My mother was called Margaret. She died in February, at home, which is what she wanted. The first thing I noticed afterwards was not the silence in the house. It was the rain.
She had loved it her whole life, and not in a poetic way. She was a gardener. Rain was the thing that did the work for her, and she would stand at the kitchen window with her tea and watch it come off the gutter and be perfectly content.
After the funeral it rained for most of March. I sat in her kitchen sorting out her papers and listened to it hit the roof, and it was the emptiest sound I have ever heard in my life.
What I was actually missing
It took me a while to work out what had gone, and it was not the rain. It was that the rain used to be for something. She would be out in it, or watching it, or telling me about it on the telephone as though I did not have my own windows. It had somebody to belong to.
The oldest thing I can remember is sitting on the step of that porch with her, both of us under the overhang, watching the water come down past the edge of the roof. I was five. She was younger then than my own daughter is now, which catches me every time I think about it.
We did not talk. You do not need to talk when it is raining. That is the whole point of it.
So I made her one
A rain drum is a steel drum with tongues cut into the lid, and it lives outside. When rain falls on it the tongues sound, one at a time, in whatever order the weather picks. It needs nothing from anybody. No power, no switch, nobody awake.
I made one and put it on her porch rail in the spring. Teal, because that was the colour of her kitchen door and it did not occur to me to choose anything else.
The house sold by the summer. The drum came with me.
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What it is like now
It sits on my own rail, under the run-off, where the gutter drips longest. I did not plan that. It is simply where the water is.
When it rains I hear it from the kitchen, and the rain is a thing again instead of a noise. That is the whole of what it does, and it is more than I expected from a piece of steel.
I am not going to tell you it is like having her back, because it is not, and anybody who has lost their mother will know exactly how badly I would want that to be true. What I will say is that the sound outside the window is no longer nothing.
And I can play it, which would have made her laugh
The tongues are numbered, and the little book that comes with it uses those same numbers instead of written music, so there is nothing to learn before you start. My mother never read a note in her life and told me so for sixty years, usually to get out of something. She would have picked this up in an afternoon out of pure stubbornness.
It is tuned so that any two tongues sound right together. You cannot get it wrong. I sit with it on my lap some evenings and work through the book badly, and that is fine.
Why it ended up in a shop
Because people kept asking. Friends of hers, mostly, standing on the porch at the wake and then later at mine, hearing it and wanting to know what it was. Several of them had lost somebody too.
What they recognised was not the sound. It was the idea that a wet afternoon could have something in it again.
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