Ate my bagel and fruit sitting in the porch swing this morning watching all the handsome little songbirds flitting around the feeders. It’s a pretty morning, heavily overcast in grays and whites and blues. If I look intently at the sky canvas, I can see peeks of blue sky. Was listening to a beautiful yard symphony till the lawn mower across the street chimed in with a loud motor solo and changed the tune.

I finally finished changing my banking over to Roanoke, been two weeks, three banks visits, several phone calls. Was so relieved that all the paperwork for social security and my Russell retirement was completed but when I went to enroll in my online banking I messed up so bad with the password and user ID, I asked Stew to try and help me enroll. I am so technology challenged, maybe it’s my age. Stew took my phone, looked at the screen and said, “How could you mess it up like this. I swear, you have offended the Gods. You are on your own. I’m throwing you out of the nest and you’ve got to learn how to fly.” I did learn how to fly…called the bank and a sweet kind lady helped my straighten it out. She laughed and said she was used to helping older folks. I’m just 67, am I an older folk?

The pageant of sunset was staged under a silver rainstorm while curtains of clouds covered a pewter colored horizon. The sun was dressed in a silk formal gown of pale sterling designed with a high bodice of pearl taffeta. The gown’s chapel length train was embellished with gleaming crystal appliqués of crescent moons and twinkling stars. A tiara of fine diamonds, resting on the sun’s rays, sparkled through the cloud covered sunset. As her gown’s long train stretched across the horizon, a silver curtain of heavy rain showered the coin colored skyline. The sun then slipped her slender long gloved arm into the crook of Father Sky’s elbow and he escorted her down the stage, both walking in time with the steady patter of the rain drops. As the sun turned out the day’s light, Father Sky kissed her goodnight and went to wake the moon and stars, hanging them high in the glistening wet, dark black, velvet of the night sky. The rainy day ends, the rainy night begins.

I have the window near my reading chair in my bedroom cracked a couple of inches. I love listening to the rain drops and the gentle rustling of the bamboo forest, so pleasant and calming, like a melodious lullaby from Mother Nature, cleansing the air and watering the earth. Just like we can’t stop the rain, we can’t stop the world’s turning of our life and its seasons. I think Morris West says it best — “If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you’ll never enjoy the sunshine.” Storms come and go but we always have the promise of the new day’s coming sunshine and God’s promise of a rainbow after the storms. The rain might be full of secrets if we sit quietly and listen.

“When you are in the middle of a storm cloud it’s hard to think outside of it, but the only way out of the storm is to ride through it and things will be a lot clearer on the other side.” — Jodi Ann Bickley