The Museum of Rain by Dave Eggers

Published by ‎ McSweeney's Publishing on June 15, 2021

Humans are motivated to act for many reasons. We want to make a profit. We want to create a legacy. We want to impress others. But might there be motivations that are less easily understood? Might we do something just for the sake of doing it? Because we had an idea, no matter how pointless or silly, and transformed the idea to reality for the simple satisfaction of contributing to the human story?

Oisín is 72 years old. When he was young, he began to collect jars of rain from the places he visited them. He placed them on a shelf in the shade of a manzanita tree. He even engraved the words Museum of Rain on a piece of wood to mark the spot. And then, as he got older, he left the project behind. How many projects have we all started and abandoned as our lives moved forward?

Patrick Mahoney has turned 75. On the second day of a family reunion to mark the occasion, the Mahoney adults are hungover and the kids are bored. Patrick suggests that Oisín take the kids to see the Museum of Rain, a three-mile hike that will give the adults time to recover. It takes Oisín some time to remember the museum and a bit more time to be persuaded to take the kids there, but he eventually teaches the kids to make walking sticks and leads them on an adventure to find the lost museum.

Patrick told one of the kids that the Museum of Rain was Oisín’s monument to tears, but Oisín explains that he made the museum because he had the idea and followed it to its completion — or at least, he gave the museum a start as a work in progress before he abandoned it. If we insist on a “dramatic origin story” for every human endeavor, Oisín tells the child, “we deprive our species of the ability to simply conjure an idea. To just make stuff and do things.”

Eggers creates a sense of wonder in the ending, after building tension with Oisín’s fear that, after all these years, the shelf will have rotted and the jars will be broken or long gone. Even if the museum is still there, he suspects that the kids will be underwhelmed by a collection of labeled jars of ordinary water. Without resorting to the supernatural, Eggers infuses the ending with maagic, exploring the miracle that is an idea and how one person’s idea can endure by being shared with people its creator never met. Given the story’s simplicity, the story’s ending is surprisingly profound and moving.

“The Museum of Rain” is a short story. Given the dreariness of most stories collected in annual “Best Short Stories” anthologies, "The Museum of Rain" will certainly merit inclusion. Maybe Eggers won’t allow it to be anthologized since McSweeney’s is publishing it as a pocket book. Whatever a reader must do to acquire it, “The Museum of Rain” is worth finding.

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