Waiting, waiting, waiting for the monsoons

Hi Monsoon, It’s party time! I sent you an invitation a while ago but never heard back. I don’t see your car out in the parking lot, either. Did something go wrong? I’ve left you messages every which way, but there’s not even a ru±e in the sky, for that matter, not one cloud either. Maybe you have your phone turned off, or are you on Windows 10? I hear it’s been disappearing emails.

Finally a reply. You’re hung up in Mexico! No permission to cross the border. Could you go around, try the ocean? Might be a refreshing change.

OK. So you were planning on being here for the opening of the Santa Fe Opera, but the opera’s closed. Right, timing’s a problem. Not much fun when there are no tailgaters to drench on opening night. I knew the guy who designed that first building. He hinted at how much you slipped him to leave that whole middle section of the roof open. You must have run low on disposable cash to have let them cover that over. So boring. We got to play poker in the boiler room with the janitors when our seats flooded.

Forget being older. We’re all older. But unlike me, you’re a lot thinner, too. Think you might look into COPD as well, as your thunder’s much weaker, not sounding nearly as much like the Flanders Front.

So now you know: The invitation stands. From a lot of us. Firefighters are running scared, and the Navajos would really appreciate a little help these days. We’d like to see you up here soon, unleashing your fabulous fury. Call if you need me to pick you up. Maybe I could help sneak you over the border.

Sometime again I will hear drops crashing on the tin roof, and not just the eight piddly ones that bounce off us now and then. I mean, I expect a whole night of gutter-gushing rain, canales pouring over, hillside waterfalls. The gravel of the driveway washed up like sea bracken to the far end of the garage. The powdery arroyo trail, navigable by boat. And that roof-denting rain will happen over and over again, ’til we’re soggy.

Someday the whole land for at least a hundred miles in every direction will look like an English golf course. The water bill will drop $50 a month. Campgrounds will sprout large tarps, like mushrooms, and the real mushrooms will poke out of the formerly brown velvet lawn and say, surprise!

I remember your delights. I long for your divine scents and cool breath. I never really minded your hail shredding my tomato plants. Nor did I fault you for making me slide under the dinner table in Chimayó when your fists suddenly lowered and started to pound. The waiter brought drinks to us under there. He had an umbrella.

You’ve been coming later and later each year, but that really doesn’t have to be, does it? We will provide plenty of fun for you to make up for missing the opera. Don’t wear a mask. Don’t socially distance. Spray droplets all over us, but make sure they’re a boisterous prelude to rivers.

Now that I know you’re getting our invitations, step on it will you? And send a few suggestive texts ahead of your grand entrance so we have time to find our umbrellas and to give the roofer a little extra something in advance.