Watercolor Sunday

For just another lazy Sunday, this was a pretty nice one. I may never figure out why a gray sky in May doesn't bother me the same way an identical sky would in January. It wasn't even warm today; it was cold enough to require a heavy sweatshirt or a jacket. It's also been alarming to hear about the flooding all these storms have caused along the Mississippi and the fact that so many people are in danger of losing their homes.

We're lucky. Around here, the main effect I've noticed from the rain is how lushly green everything is. It's a treat just to rest your eyes on the spring leaves or the neatly mown grass in someone's yard. That alone is probably one thing that makes the spring rain different from the winter rain -- all that green is evidence of life running riot, shooting through branches and twigs until it bursts out the ends in a luxuriance of leaves and pushes up through the dirt in an extravagant carpet of grass.

Most of the trees have finished their flowering (which takes place in April), though I've seen dogwoods and a few others that still have blossoms. I always enjoy the show of color during that first flowering, when the redbuds and the weeping cherries are so delicately beautiful you can hardly believe it. This year, I'm entranced by all of this May greenery and am wondering why I used to find it a little anticlimactic after the more varied palette of early spring.

I went to Starbucks this afternoon for my half-price Frappuccino and some reading, which seemed the perfect activity for a rainy afternoon. Instead, I found myself at a window seat, keeping an eye on the rain and watching other people as they came and went. There was a cheerfulness in the air, an absence of urgency, and something zen about the whole enterprise. Even though I sat for two hours with my chin propped in my hand, looking out the window, I was not a bit sad. I was like a house cat who has found the perfect perch. Whatever the human equivalent of purring is, that's what I was doing.

I went for a walk afterwards and felt like I had stepped into a watercolor painting; it was a little bit like that part in Mary Poppins where Mary, Bert, Jane, and Michael pop into the painting on the sidewalk for a whimsical jaunt. Because I was in absolutely no hurry to go anywhere or do anything, I had time to notice all sorts of little things; a curved white bridge in someone's garden; a yellow door in a gray stone house; a robin alight on a metal chair presiding like a throne on a front lawn (something like The Anecdote of the Jar: "The jar was round upon the ground / And tall and of a port in air. / It took dominion everywhere."); a tree where not the flowers but the leaves were pink.

If someone were to say it doesn't sound like I accomplished much today, I would say that's not true. I did the dishes and spent five minutes mopping the floors after dinner. What else do you want? Why spoil a perfectly beautiful afternoon with too much productivity? If you were to say it doesn't seem like you're thinking too hard about your dissertation, I would say it's true that I wasn't thinking hard about it, but it occurred to me just now that the whole afternoon unfolded like a meditative walk in a labyrinth. No stress and no hurry, just looking, sipping, and meandering. No concern about where to go and no real possibility of taking a wrong turn.

If it were possible to put this afternoon in a bottle, I would save it for the next time I'm feeling cranky or irritable, then spray some lightly behind my ears. It would come out smelling like violets and rain; the label would feature pink roses awash in raindrops and mist. If it had a soundtrack, it would be a combination of Mozart and light jazz with a little Randy Newman thrown in. And it would taste like chocolate caramels with a touch of sea salt, the soft kind of caramel that swirls when you sink your teeth into it.