Clouds

Thanks to the cat, I was up early enough to see the sun rising into the clouds. It was raining. Then, as I was walking, my eyes were drawn up to the clouds. Layers and layers of clouds, some flat and gray, some fluffy and almost white. And little peeks of blue sky.

Several years ago, we had a May in the DC area where we never saw the sun. It was gray and rainy and cold and yucky and I became addicted to my 3 pm vanilla latte. I thought I might go crazy.

I can live with the occasional cloudy day, rainy even. But I need visible proof that it won’t last forever. It gets hard, after days of being cooped up inside watching the sky go from black to gray and back again, to remember what the sun felt like on my skin, how it made everything brighter inside and out. It gets easy to slip into a sort of despair, a loss of initiative, a waiting passively and sadly until the sun comes out again.

I don’t have a magic treatment if your life feels like that horrible May right now. But I do know that the sun is still out there, even if it’s hidden. And that as long as it lasts, if you need that 3 pm vanilla latte to give shape and energy to your days, do it. Safely, of course. Maybe you could learn to make it at home, and treat yourself every day. Whatever works for you to look forward instead of back, to move instead of stagnating. It may not make the clouds disappear, but it makes being under them more bearable.