A walk in the rain

The rain seemed like it would never stop and then suddenly there was a break in the clouds and the sun came out. After days of rain, it felt like a revelation to see the sun again. My six-year-old daughters and I decided to take our new dog, an energetic beagle mix, on a nearby walking trail. Surely the rain was over and being the optimistic type, I didn't carry an umbrella. About a mile into the trail, the rain began again. It wasn't a light drizzle or a slight sprinkling. It was a small downpour or as my country people say, a gully washer. And we were smack dab in the middle of it. The rain plastered our hair to our skulls and our clothes to our bodies. We were drenched and had to cross a major intersection at rush hour to get home.
Standing in the rain waiting for the crosswalk signal with the smell of wet dog wafting up at me, I noticed the people in their warm, dry cars glancing over at us and smirking. Which is when I began to dance. And whoop. The girls, thinking this was great fun, began to jump up and down and dance and whoop with me. The grins in the cars became larger. That was okay. I'm sure I was a quite a sight. On that street corner, I pulled out some dance moves that hadn't been seem since the mid-nineties. As my grandma used to say,, "In for a penny, in for a pound." Because it didn't really matter to me what all the people in their cars thought. In that moment what mattered most was what the girls took away from the experience. I wanted them to know that it was okay to dance in the rain with the world watching. I think they understood that and they enjoyed it.