This is a story I told to my two eldest daughters: Kaitlyn and Terryn, one summer day in 1997.
It was a beautiful day. The sky was blue with small, puffy clouds. Two little girls were playing on the sidewalk when one of them started to sing.
Way high up in one of those small, puffy clouds, a very tiny raindrop was floating. He was so small that the air just kept him up in that cloud, and he had never seen anything but white all around him.
Then he heard a sound. It was a very small sound, but it was beautiful. The itty-bitty raindrop had never heard anything like it. It was a girl singing.
The raindrop decided that he just had to get closer to that sound so that he could hear it better. But he was too small to fall out of the cloud. He knew that he had to get heavier, but how?
He was way up in a cloud and there was nothing heavy to pick up. Could he find a nice rock? No. Could he find a heavy stick? No. He just could not think of any way to get heavier, up there in that cloud with nothing but other tiny raindrops.
Other tiny raindrops! That was it! Maybe his friends the other raindrops could help. He called one of his friend over. When they touched, the drops flowed together into one raindrop twice as big.
That was great. The raindrop was now twice as heavy, but he was still too light to fall out of the cloud. So he called some more of his friends over. Each time another tiny raindrop friend touched him, he would get a little bigger.
Soon he was starting to fall. He moved very slowly at first, but as he fell, he ran into more tiny raindrops. This made him heavier and heavier.
In no time at all, he was a full grown raindrop and was falling closer to that wonderful sound. Suddenly, he fell out of the cloud! The soft, safe, white cloud where he had lived his entire life was gone!
No, wait, there was the cloud up above him. And he could see some other clouds, too. But what was all this blue between the clouds and all around? He had never seen the sky before. It was the second most beautiful thing that he knew of. The first was that sound that was rapidly getting louder.
The raindrop looked down to see the sound. He saw lots of green and brown and grey, but could not see where the sound was coming from. At least the green and brown and grey thing was getting closer.
Then he noticed the green and brown and grey thing was the ground and he was falling very fast towards it. That scared the raindrop as he had never seen anything bigger than the cloud he grew up in, and he had never gone so fast. Faster and faster he fell.
He was so scared that he started to shake. He was no longer so sure that he wanted to get closer to that music that he kept hearing. The music was nice, but he missed his home in the cloud.
The scared raindrop was feeling very small, even though he was bigger than he had ever though possible for him to be. The ground was rushing towards him so fast he was sure he could never stop. In fact, he realized that he did not even know how to stop.
He knew he was going to splat all over the ground any moment now. He looked down one last time and saw a red and a yellow spot on top of the grey of the sidewalk. They were the tops of the little girls' heads, one red and one blond.
SPLAT! The raindrop crashed down. The raindrop splashed all around and fell back into tiny drops. The sweet music stopped.
The little girl felt the rain on her head. She reached up and noticed how her hair was all wet. But it was not raining, it was only one drop. So she decided to keep on playing. She started singing again.
The itty-bitty raindrop was now trapped in the little girl's hair. All his friend raindrops had left him. He was all alone, more alone than he had ever been.
Then the music started up and it was loud and clear and as beautiful as the first time he had heard it. He had come to the right place. This was his new home, and he was happy.