rain

Forgive me if I talk too much about the rain. I live in the Pacific Northwest. It’s what we do.

Winter is perpetually soggy. As I type this we are in between rain showers and the sky outside my window is an expanse of white. No clouds. No tiny glimpses of sunlight. It is a blank canvas and I imagine myself flicking a paintbrush at it: Teal, yellow, hot pink.

January and February are the longest months for me, but some days I can find beauty in a landscape like this. It’s in the tree line on the horizon and the way it rises out of the mist, grey-green and muted. It’s in kids kicking through puddles on their way to school. It’s in the sound of raindrops on the roof at night. If there is a soundtrack to my life it would be kids playing, dogs barking, coffee percolating and the tap-tapping of rain against the window.

There is beauty here still. Today, though, I want colour. I want to shake off this blanket of grey and drench myself in bursts of purple dahlias, brilliant blue skies, bright red maple leaves. But outside my window the sky is still white, and the brush is still brown and the pavement is still wet from the rain. So I wait for the moments when the sun breaks through.

There is a theory that happiness cannot exist on its own. That the depth of your joy can only be measured against the depth of your sadness. If you had forever lived in a cotton candy bubble, would you even realize you’re in it? Would you stop and dip a finger into its soft, sticky walls or be amazed by its shimmering sweetness? Or would you grow tired of pink and just keep on walking, head-down through your regular old life?

I suppose the same holds true for the weather. Because there is nothing that fills you with gratitude quite so unexpectedly as the feeling of sunshine on your face after so many months of rain. You’ll see people stopping in place, sinking onto park benches, tipping their chins toward the sky. Doing nothing at all but soaking in the warm glow of the sun on their winter-beaten faces. That perfect moment feels worth a few months of grey.

With love. xx