The Long Monsoon

"I can't sleep."

The words come as a whisper in my dreams. I reach my hand out into the darkness, searching for a tangible body. I touch pajamas or a wisp of hair, a dark body orbiting the black night like a dying star or black hole absorbing all light. The silhouette may be framed by a flash of lightning. Our house has touches of British Colonial Ceylon, rich wood beams and ceilings; there are the tops of palm fronds outside our bedroom window that reach out like fingers lit up in the storm. My kids believe the antidote to insomnia is to instill insomnia in others, to pass it on -- if you will -- like a baton in a relay race, so they wake up one of their parents. Usually, me. I don't yet understand why they think it is a good idea to wake me up when they can't sleep. I can't suck the sleeplessness from them like I could venom from a snake bite. Now, we're both awake. But I remind myself when they say they can't sleep is really code for something else they can't or aren't willing to articulate, and that's fine. I'd rather they didn't. I don't press them to share their bad dreams with me. They're only dreams, after all. Better forgotten. 

I usually guide them back to their beds and lay with them just long enough they drift back to sleep but I am awake enough to sneak back to my own bed. Sometimes, more often than not, I fall asleep, too. 

There are two, three, or four monsoon seasons in Sri Lanka, depending on who you ask. The rainfall pattern is influenced by the monsoon winds of the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal. The first monsoon is from mid-May to October, give or take six months, half a year, depending on how you count. Winds originate in the southwest, bringing moisture from the Indian Ocean. When these winds encounter the slopes of the Central Highlands, they unload heavy rains on the mountain slopes and the southwest of the island. 

The second monsoon season begins as soon as the first one ends, begging the question why it is two distinct seasons. The intermonsoonal months of October and November bring periodic squalls and sometimes tropical cyclones, overcast skies, and rains to the southwest, northeast, and eastern parts of the island (sounds like most of Sri Lanka to me). 

During the third monsoon season, December to March, winds come from the northeast, bringing moisture from the Bay of Bengal. 

Lastly, a second intermonsoonal period occurs from March until mid-May, with light, variable winds and evening thundershowers.

In short, it rains all year long all over Sri Lanka.

And yet, I love it. I asked Elise why the grey skies and torrential rains didn't bring the same blue feeling grey skies and winter brought in Jordan. I don't know the exact answer. Maybe it's all the jungle green, pockets of golden sunshine in between the showers, and the fact the rain is warm. 

This past weekend, we accepted an invitation to attend a Back to School brunch at Water's Edge, a country club near the kids' school. It sits beside a lake. On the way out to the school one day, Elise saw a 10-foot crocodile waiting along the shore of the same lake ringing the Parliament building; we didn't let the kids wander too far. 

They swam in the rain while the adults huddled under a patio umbrella. We've found ourselves too often unwitting participants in a game of expat one-upmanship, who is more expat. We have to be careful not to wear our badges of expatriotism too proudly as we compare our lists of all the countries we've lived in with one another. 

The kids had fun and that's what really matters. They had face painting and bounce houses, and only Sam is becoming too old to enjoy the innocent, simple joy of having a dragon painted on your cheek.

Peter came he from school today and told Elise and he found a friend. It was welcome news as he had been the one fighting the move the hardest. He also told us the PE teacher told him he had to wear his hair up in a man bun at PE or tie it back. He decided maybe to was time to get a haircut after all, so I walked him to Toni & Guys, sneaking in right before they closed.

Yes, that is Van Halen you hear playing in the background.  A-Ha's "Take on Me" would soon follow. Sometimes, I do feel trapped in time when we live overseas.

We have also discovered there is a Taco Bell here, and though it is not like any Taco Bell you may have ever been to, it is still very good.  They have fried chicken! Which is actually amazing and you can get fried chicken tacos which ... hello!