Rainy Day
Wednesday, March 14th, 2007The view out of my fifteenth floor office shows me the rest of Columbus’ downtown, including the river, and the few bridges that cross it. Today there is a fog that hovers about my height above ground, giving everything a diffuse ambient white light. I’m glad I’m not out in it, and I’m sure it looks very different from the ground.
There’s no sun, but I wish I was outside.
Last night, I slept in Kathryn’s room, with two windows open, a cool breeze blowing from window to window, just cool enough to need blankets. To make it so that snuggling into a comforter feels good, but not so cold the parts of you uncovered are shivering. I have to have a cover to sleep — even if it’s just a sheet, and I can’t cover my head and sleep, either. So weather like this is very welcome.
We went to bed early, sleep definitely by 11 or 12. A deep sleep born of lack of sleep and utter satiation, but I awple without an alarm around 6:30 to the pleasant lullaby of raindrops hitting the windows, and enchanting melody that nearly made me late for work. It made me wish for an earlier time when I didn’t have to go to work, and I could just stay there, and nap, and listen to the rain.
It’s not raining now. With the downpour we had this morning along with the 40-degree lows and highs in the 70’s, the weeks-long snow coverage is gone, and nature’s colors are back, even if they are sad browns and desaturated greens. It’s color, at least, instead of the white-gray-black of winter in Ohio. Charlotte would be blooming now, the dogwood’s flowers prominent, heralding the coming of leaves. The pear trees may even already shedding their “petal snow” that comes in March.
Even so, I know this is Indian Summer, as Viv always reminded me. It will be cold again in a week or two, it may even snow again. But it relieves the pressure of the dark. Yesterday was sunny, and my skin soaked it up like a month-long binge of SSRI’s. I felt that joy of just driving around with the windows down and the radio blaring ancient rock’n'roll, the wind in my non-existent hair, reveling in the return of the Sun.
Even with the fog, and clouds, and the passing rain, I don’t want to be here, at my desk, looking out and it. I want to be in the world, in this prescient reminder of months to come. I love my job, for once in my life, but today I want to be out in it, walking, laughing, and knowing that Spring is coming.
