It’s raining at the moment here in Amarillo.

I’m positively giddy about it.

Strange? Perhaps. The strangest element of all is the fact that I actually am giddy. Why? Well, I was born, reared and came of age in a community where rain is all too distressingly common: Portland, the one in Oregon.

I’ve adopted over nearly 19 years in the Texas Panhandle the attitude of folks who’ve lived here longer than we have, which is that the rain is something to be cherished. You pray for it around here. You thank Almighty God in heaven when it arrives and you plead to the Almighty to bring it more often and in greater quantities.

Before moving to Amarillo, my wife, our sons and I spent some time — nearly 11 years — in another rainy locale: Beaumont, on the sticky-moist Texas Gulf Coast. It rains a lot there, too; even more annually than in Portland. But the difference between the two cities’ climates simply is this: When the rain comes in Beaumont, it arrives in torrents, several inches in an hour or two; in Portland, it rains for two, maybe three days before you ever notice it.

I grew up complaining constantly about the rain. As a kid, I was stuck indoors when it rained. I would gripe about it to my parents. “Go talk to God,” Dad would say, which was his way of telling me there was nothing he could do about it. “OK, Dad, thanks a lot,” I’d say to myself.

Now that we’ve been ensconced in Amarillo, we’ve adapted to the Panhandle appreciation for the rain.

No longer do I complain about it. I welcome it. I love it. At times, I feel like peeling off my shirt, a la Tim Robbins in the film “Shawshank Redemption” and just standing there, taking it all in.

This rain shall pass, likely rather quickly. I’ll wait anxiously for the next storm cloud.

Let it rain.