The Sound of Rain

For some reason or another, I have always enjoyed the sound of rain. Not the booming chaos of thunderstorms, mind you, nor the threatening roar of a torrential downpour, but the peaceful drumming of soft, steady rain.

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Oak Ridge Hospital circa 1945.

It is Wednesday, November 5, 1947. Dad holds an umbrella above Mom as the two of them carefully step off the front porch of Dad's apartment at 205 Vermont Avenue, splash across the front yard to the street, and pile into Dad's 1936 Oldsmobile coup. Usually, Dad would be well on his way to Y-12 at this hour, but today is different; they are on their way to the hospital instead. They live close by, an eight-minute walk at best, but it is raining, and they are in a hurry. Mom is in the beginning stages of giving birth to a baby. Dad steps on the gas, and they arrive at Oak Ridge Hospital in less than three minutes. 

At the hospital, they are asked a few questions as part of the admission process. The answers can be summed up in two sentences:

Mom is a 21-year-old married white woman from Sheffield, Alabama, whose maiden name is Claudia Felicia Osborn, whose occupation is "housewife," and who is about to deliver her first child at the end of a nine-month pregnancy.

The father of the yet-to-be-born child is Forrest Neil Case, her husband, a twenty-eight-year-old white man from Mansfield, Ohio, whose occupation is "chemist."

The paperwork done, Mom is admitted to the hospital shortly before 9:00 AM.  

I have no idea what happens during the next forty-eight plus hours. I only know that the rain continues all that day and into the night. By Thursday morning, the rains have subsided, and the day continues fair and cool. Friday, November 7, begins with grey skies and dark clouds rolling in from the Cumberland Plateau. By 12:40 AM, fifty-two hours and forty-five minutes after checking into the hospital, the first drops of rain begin pelting the roof of the hospital as Mom finally gives birth to her first child, a healthy baby boy.

After the birth, orderlies wheel Mom from the delivery room down the hall to a room she will share with another woman, a Cherokee from North Carolina, who has also given birth that day. Exhausted, Mom quickly falls asleep. Dad lingers a bit, looks at the baby through the nursery window, then returns home for a few hours. He had not noticed that the rains had come again and runs to the Olds to keep from getting soaked.

Wrapped in blankets, Mom's baby boy lies in the nursery asleep. He and the Cherokee child are the only newborns there. The falling rain drums steadily on the roof, walls, and windows of the hospital all afternoon and into the night, punctuated from time to time by the soft voices of the nurses and the occasional crying of the two newborns whose lives on this earth are just now beginning.

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I had a childhood friend in Oak Ridge whose name was Rosalie. Her family lived in Woodland, a short distance from ours. We attended the same schools and rode the same buses. She was from the Qualla Boundary, Cherokee, North Carolina, and her family would often return there on weekends to visit kin. Someday I must ask her when and where was she born and does she enjoy the sound of rain. Not the booming chaos of thunderstorms, nor the threatening roar of a torrential downpour, but the peaceful drumming of soft, steady rain.