After the rain

A couple of Fridays ago, Matt and I had something to do in the evening.  I know!  Unusual in and of itself.  But that’s not my point.  It was the end of a week of rain (after seemingly months of rain in Boston).  It had been cold and rainy all day long, and I knew the evening’s celebration (for the retirement of one of Whit’s favorite teachers) was under a tent.  I felt not a little bit of dread.

Then, around 5, it began to clear.  It actually turned into a spectacular evening.  As we were driving Whit to a friend’s house on the way to the school, I marveled to Whit that it had turned to so lovely.

“And it is that way even though everything is wet, and despite having been such a yucky day,” Whit observed from the back seat.

I laughed to myself, realizing something for the first time.

“See, I actually think it’s more beautiful because everything is wet, and because it was so ugly earlier.”

I glanced back to see that he was looking at the window.

Maybe this is what midlife is.  Realizing that the rain and the storms make the clear skies that much more beautiful?  Knowing you can’t have one without the other. The glory and the grit, the sunshine and the rain, the love and the loss.  Flips of the same coin.  And, truthfully, each enriching the other in ways I have only begun to understand.

I like this definition of life in the middle: knowing that the light is beautiful because of the dark, not in spite of it.

Photo is from later that evening.  Grandeur all the more lovely because of the nasty day that preceded it.