Dusk moves in, but it hasn’t given up the sky yet, so I look up. It feels like stolen time, this walk on an early April night—a luxury I’ve snatched for myself once again because I can. And I still see the clouds.
I gather my steps with our girls, waves of air nudging us one way, then buffeting us at the next turn. The roiling winds of a temperate evening, warning of things to come.
“The clouds look like gray cotton candy,” Dicka says, and I laugh.
I haven’t seen pewter spun sugar before, and I don’t think I want to, but this is nice.
Rushing winds, rushing words. Because life with girls is like that—at least mine. I listen more for cadence than meaning. The punctuation falls off and blows away.
and doesn’t walking feel awkward like what do you do with your hands what do you mean you swing your arms it could be fall but the air doesn’t feel like Halloween like the Halloween in 90s movies which is exciting and full of expectation how was it spring in February this year and winter in March and if I were a bird I’d have to be a bird of prey so I choose an eagle when I think of birds of prey I think of vultures but ew they only feed on the dead and it’s weird to think of clouds at night I know they’re there but hidden I think of the pillar of cloud by day the pillar of fire by night and what if God guided us like that now can you even imagine and there’s expectation in this wind don’t you feel it too
The conversation ambles on and blows us home, and I still think of clouds, once here, now enshrouded by darkness. I settle into the gold chair, and wouldn’t you know it, Streams in the Desert speaks in its old-timey yet relevant way of the very thing I think:
“Get into the habit of looking for the silver lining of the cloud and when you have found it, continue to look at it, rather than at the leaden gray in the middle… At first you may not be conscious of this, still as you resolutely and uncompromisingly snub every tendency toward doubt and depression that assails you, you will soon be made aware that the powers of darkness are falling back… Keep the skyward look, my soul! Keep the skyward look!”
Oh, I plan to.
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*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.