(Editor's Note: The writer is an associate professor of sociology at Adelphi University and a Woodbury resident.)

A lot of us think of rain as a nuisance, something which spoils a day, prevents us from going outside or reduces a commute on the Northern State Parkway to an interminable crawl. On the positive side rain may bring relief from the heat and humidity of a summer day. Then there are the aesthetics of rain. They include: thundershowers, which can alter the landscape rendering it temporarily mysterious and beautiful; the moments of visual clarity just after a rain; and finally watching birds in a drizzle.

One evening a few weeks ago what had been a warm and humid day turned darker and darker. Then down came a cascade of water. Looking out the window the rain was coming down so heavily that in one direction it seemed to form a milky gray wall beyond which we couldn't see. In the street water rose almost to curb level in a few minutes. Glancing down at a large tree I could hardly believe my eyes. "You've got to see this," I yelled to my wife. There were small hailstones, lots of them, at the base of the tree and more bouncing on our patio. My wife looked on with intense interest and her arms protectively wrapped around her waist. After a short time the rain tailed off, the water subsided and it became notably cooler.

I went out to find surprisingly that one section of the sky was blue with some clouds. A misshapen fireball of sun, the kind one sees in the morning, not at day's end was on the horizon. As I drove the orange reflection of the sun was cast on the road's wet sides in an eerily beautiful way. The road had steam rising from it, as did a nearby ballfield.

Three quarters of an hour later with the sky and clouds darkening as evening fell, the steam instead of dissipating, was still coming from the road but thicker than before. As I drove slowly along it seemed as if I were going through one bed of steam after another. In some places the sky looked like a dark pastel painting. This was not the Woodbury and Syosset that I knew. I felt as if I were passing through an enchanted pastel painting.

Late one morning drops start to come down with such intensity that they partially bounce back up like small bullets of water in the street. The rain does not last long leaving one sloping rooftop with a stream of steam rising from it. It is moments like this that I'm glad that my eyes are light sensitive. Bright, sunny summer days can create glare, which make wrap-around sunglasses and a visor necessary. But it is under a gray sky like this one that I see objects and subtle colors so clearly. Just after a rain I think that things are even clearer. The sides of a house, the grass and a pine tree have an exquisite still clarity that won't last long. In the meantime the world around me is serene.

As it gets lighter the sharpness and clarity begin to fade. A bird starts to chirp and haze reappears. The sun comes out and I lose interest in the landscape. But later Mother Nature has a gift for me. The sun goes in, steam starts to move off the sloped roof like a gently rising morning mist. As it gets somewhat darker the sharpness and clarity return and everything is oh so lovely.

It's mid afternoon as raindrops ripple the puddles. With my lunch in the microwave I go out on our patio to find two grayish sparrows that I cannot identify flying into the low branches of the pine tree which straddles the patio. There's a robin already under the tree that flies to a nearby lawn. They are doing what we do when it rains, trying to stay dry. One of the sparrows drops a small dried leaf and goes to the grass for it. The other goes to a crack in the wooden wall below the tree seemingly to forage for insects. There is the gentle sound of water coming from a drainpipe and the cold feeling of drops falling on my shoulders. I go in for a windbreaker and binoculars. Both birds are side by side looking like twins on thin branches to which they cling with slender toes. They jump to even thinner branches in pressing their bills to the branches in search of insects brought to the surface by the rain. They bend and raise their wings to keep their balance as they search for food looking beautiful in the process.

Suddenly a bird lands on the fence by the tree. Is this another sparrow? It raises its gray tail revealing a rust rump spot, which identifies it as a gray catbird. It scares off one of the sparrows but the other stays, eventually settling on a branch. I look up from my notebook where blue ink is running on the pages and the bird is gone. In an adjacent tree I see the head of a squirrel. Perhaps it precipitated the bird's departure. I go upstairs to work on the computer. Soon the rain starts to fall just hard enough to hear it on tree leaves. It is one of summer's most soothing sounds.