Desert Ears

It has been raining in my little desert town for four days. It's amazing! I love when it rains in the desert. The aroma of rain mixed with cactus and the other desert plants is one of my favorite smells.

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There's only one drawback...the sound of the rain pounding against my house in the middle of the night.

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When I lived in Kansas, rain and wind were constant things. I was accustomed to sleeping through them and would rarely wake, no matter how hard the rain pounded or how loud the wind howled.

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But I've been living in a quiet desert for a year now. My ears adjusted to the quiet sounds of the desert. So when the rain started pounding last night, I could not sleep. At all.

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As I lay awake, my mind started drifiting. I remembered an old episode of "I Love Lucy." Lucy had just moved from the city to the country. She was used to sleeping in the city. Cars driving past, sirens blaring, people talking, none of that bothered her sleep in the slightest. In the country she was met with a different kind of night noise...crickets chirping, owls hooting, wind blowing, walls creaking. The country noises were, in fact, much quieter than the city noises, but her ears weren't able to cope with the new sounds. Lucy had city ears.

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And as I listened to the rain pounding outside, my desert ears unable to cope with the sound, I had to laugh. I've only been out of Kansas for a year and I already can't sleep through the rain.