If you grow up in England, you know about rain. You know about heavy rain, light rain, drizzle, mizzle, and mist. You know about the kind of rain that slaps you in the face, the kind of rain that comes at you sideways, and the kind of rain that is invisible and still makes you wet. You know about the rain that makes you hot, the rain that makes you cold. You know about the sinister rain that comes before a thunderstorm, and the crackling kind that comes during one. You know rain because it is there, almost every day.

There are plenty of types of rain you’re not familiar with, of course. There is no monsoon and no typhoon. You don’t often get those driving, painful rods that come down for days. There is none of the swampy humid wet, not really, and there’s no place to find that steamy tropical drip that feels like being in a sauna.

But if you grow up in England, rain is just the thing.

They make jokes about it of course, but it’s one of those things that is worth joking about; the kind of thing that makes uncles lean over and say to you quietly: “It’s funny because it’s true.”

These days, living in San Francisco, rain doesn’t come very often. Yes, people always laugh about the city’s indecisive weather, its umpteen microclimates and the thick, sarcastic fog. And, yes, those things are real, but they are also a sleight of hand. San Francisco often gets wet, but it doesn’t rain much.

Sometimes “not much” means “not at all.” A few years ago we went without it for a long time. There were entire years of drought punctuated by incredible, angry rainfall that had no proper place to go and simply broke the dams and ran away back to the ocean. Drought is not so frequent right now, but the dry has retrained me. It’s made me forget—or at least lose any affection for—the endless days of foreboding skies, those weeks when you live your life under a heavy blanket.

These days I love a good heavy downpour, but I have grown distasteful of the little rains, that everyday kind. During the rainy season I’ll frown at the prospect of a chance of rainfall; once a year I’ll wonder if it’s time to buy Wellington boots. Where I used to go out without a coat, today I’ll throw on a waterproof coat at the merest sign of damp in the air.

It rained this weekend, real rain: an inch and a half on Friday alone.

We sat inside, enjoying the feeling of being locked in by the conditions. I thought about the smell of the wet leaves, of walking to school and pulling up my hood, of getting off the Tube feeling sweaty and cold at the same time. I remembered my grandfather in his old estate carving his way through huge roadside lakes to create arcs of water that cascaded onto the grass.

I stood in the garden tying back a branch of wisteria that had blown loose in the wind, my fingers frigid.

A flower in the garden of succulents outside the front of our house was coaxed out into the world, red and proud.

My shoes were muddy, and I felt like a kid again.