“Nice weather for the Fourth.”

“I know! Isn’t it wonderful?”

It was raining, and all the windows in my parents’ house had been thrown open, the air conditioning turned off. My father was grilling hamburgers and hot dogs under the awning in the back yard.

My mother mentioned a friend who had moved to the Phoenix area from back East and found it strange when the Phoenix kids who spent all their time indoors would run out to play in the street when it rained. “All her life she’d grown up thinking that rain meant it was time to go indoors.”

It was over by the time we had finished eating.

“It was only supposed to blow through real quick,” said my father.

“That’s how the monsoon goes.”

“Oh, is it the monsoon?”

“Part of the monsoon season. Though monsoons are usually more thunderstorms. This felt more like when a hurricane blows off the coast or up through Mexico and all we get is the leftover rain.”