Letter to the People I Met as We Hid From the Rain Under a Bridge Together

“Do not be angry with the rain; it simply does not know how to fall upwards.”
— Vladimir Nabokov.

Dear you,

It’s been a few weeks, how have you been? Did your daughter eventually get to school on time? Did those orders of fresh phở reach your hungry customers safely? As for you, how long did it take for your nice leather shoes to completely dry? I’m sorry that your poncho broke and water poured onto your leg.

I’m doing fine — soaked pant hems, dirty tires, and a tinge of stress having to drive under the drizzle — but three decades in Saigon have honed my resilience in the face of the city’s monsoon. Now, I can catch even the most microscopic whiff of petrichor moments before the rain comes, and I’ve long etched into my skin a reminder not to take off my raincoat too early, even though for one moment it might seem like the pouring has ceased. A spare pair of flip-flops in my bike’s trunk to deploy in place of hard-to-dry footwear, an ability to unfurl my poncho in less than 30 seconds, and a sense of acceptance that the water is a welcome element of life.

I apologize for not getting your name, but I doubt you’ll remember me, like how I don’t remember you, apart from visual and auditory slivers that come and go as time marinates them in my memory. A Hello Kitty slipper, the ding of a phone reminder, a grin as warm as the sun of summer. Would we be friends had we encountered one another elsewhere in this 10-million-people town?

For a fleeting fifteen-minute while in our lives, we were here, huddling in the cavernous space under this bridge that crosses over the canal, like a shoal of remoras beneath a whale. We were here, united by our need to wait out the battering of rain, just imprudent enough to forget to bring a raincoat in the face of the ferocious southern rainy season, and just freezing-cold enough to not care about the irked beeping of incoming traffic admonishing us for taking up street space.

I’ve been on both sides of the beeping. I’ve nonchalantly stopped along the road under an underpass to hide from the monsoon and I’ve honked at gaggles of rain-hiders who slowed down my commute in a time of urgency. What I’ve learned is that everybody forgets as soon as the rainwater stops falling. Enduring the pitter-patter of a Saigon rain is a stressful daily ritual these days, so I consciously remind myself to practice empathy every time I look up to the endless sky and drops of rain stare down at me. There is a certain camaraderie that grows within those who have undergone trying times together, and it was absolutely my pleasure to have experienced our fifteen minutes’ worth of camaraderie together.

Yours torrentially,

Rain-hider.