A growl of thunder woke me up. Rain pounding on my bedroom window clung to the glass and transformed into long rivulets that traced the same path over, and over again. My sister Mary, with whom I shared the bedroom, was already up. I crawled out from under the covers and wandered downstairs and into the kitchen. Two of my sisters were there finishing the breakfast dishes.

Mary said, “You finally decided to get up?”

My other sister made fun of my tangled hair by pointing out, “You have a rat’s nest on the back of your head.” A flash of lightning was followed by a long, low grumble of thunder. The windows in the kitchen were open. A warm, slightly damp breeze caressed my cheeks.

Mom walked into the kitchen and commented, “It’s dark in the house as though it was early dawn instead of ten in the morning.” Turning to me she said, “Go on and get dressed, Kathy, and try to get those tangles out of your hair.” I nodded as I spread butter on a slice of bread and took a huge bite.

After our noon meal, Mom announced, “Since I can’t work in the garden today, I’m going to spend the afternoon sewing.” I slowly followed her upstairs where she had her sewing machine. Since rain was forecast to come and go all day, that meant I’d be spending the day inside the house, too.

One of the small closets in our house that my family called cubby-holes was near the sewing machine. I pulled the door open. Even I had to bend over to enter this storage space. On the right side of this closet were boxes of clothing patterns and scraps of material. Down the center, there was a taut wire filled with clothes hangers holding fancy clothing like prom and wedding dresses. I instinctively didn’t touch my sister’s wedding dresses but took down the prom dresses to play dress-up.

When I tired of flouncing around in the ruffled dresses, I turned my attention to the old cast-off toys on the left side of the closet. The toys were ones I had outgrown, but I guessed they were too good to give away. Mom said she was saving them for grandchildren.

The left side of that closet extended a long way back behind the sewing room wall. When I started to poke around at the Christmas decorations stored there, Mom sternly commanded, “Stay out of that part of the closet.”

Rain continued to lightly pepper the windowpanes. I felt cozy in our warm and dry home. There were more ‘cubby-holes’ for me to explore, and I knew just the ones I wanted to tackle next. They were cubby-hole closets connected by a secret passageway. My brother and I had side-by-side bedrooms, both had dormers. A long cubby-hole closet extended from one room to another under the roofline.

Just like in the taller sewing room cubby-hole, a taut wire was strung from one end to the other end. After fighting my way through my big sister’s clothing hanging on the wire and boxes on the floor, I started to find interesting old boy toys that my brother had once played with. Then I fought through his shirts and trousers hanging on the wire before finally bursting out of the cubby-hole closet door into his room.

When I peeked out of the room at Mom sitting at the sewing machine, she looked up and said, “Betty and Mary are in the kitchen making fudge.” I didn’t need her to repeat that. I tore downstairs for my share of the sweet treat and possibly to be the one to scrape the kettle clean.

After I had my fill of sugar, I raided the cupboard where our comic books were stored and stretched out on the cool, linoleum living room floor to read the stack I’d selected. Another thunderstorm was rumbling through, but the rain hadn’t caught up with it yet. Outside the open living room windows, I could hear the slow drip, drip, drip of water from an earlier storm draining off the roof and smell the sweet scent of wet lilies blooming below the window. I contentedly turned the page, happy that I had such an enjoyable rainy afternoon.