My elderly neighbor, Mr. Dalen, once asked me to pick up a few plastic chairs for him — but not just any kind. He wanted the old-fashioned ones with a drainage hole right in the middle of the seat. I shrugged it off as a strange request, but I went looking anyway. When I couldn’t find that exact style, I brought home standard patio chairs instead.

He thanked me politely, the way he always did. But the look in his eyes told me I’d gotten something wrong. I convinced myself it was nothing — chairs are chairs, right? — but with Mr. Dalen, things were rarely without a reason. He was in his late seventies, thin as a reed, quiet as a whisper, always wearing that faded tan fishing hat. Since his wife, Nadine, had passed five years earlier, he’d lived alone, moving through life at a slow, careful pace.

The next day, I stopped by to tell him I could return the chairs and keep looking for the ones he’d asked for. He hesitated, then asked, “Do you know what those chairs are for?”
I guessed wrong — twice.
Finally, he answered in a low voice: “Rain.”

He told me how he and Nadine used to sit outside during storms, tucked beneath an umbrella, listening to the soft patter of rain on the fabric above them. Those old chairs, the ones with the hole in the middle, drained the water so they never ended up sitting in puddles. “These ones’ll pool,” he said, tapping the seat. “Not the same.”....