It rained the kind of rain that is not weather, exactly — too soft to require an umbrella, too steady to ignore. I walked home through it for twenty minutes and arrived neither wet nor dry, in some third condition I did not have a word for.

I made tea and sat by the window. The rain made the street wider. The cars passed slower. A man across the way was watering plants on his fire escape, which is, I think, the kind of thing only people who do not need to do it would do.

I noticed that I was happy. I did not want to disturb the noticing by paying it too much attention.

There are afternoons that are not for anything. There are afternoons whose only job is to be an afternoon. I will not always be able to grant myself one. Today I could, and so I did, and I am writing this down so that the next time someone asks me what I did last Wednesday I can remember that I did the rain.