singing in the rain

I didn’t have time this morning. You know how it is – you plan to be out by a certain hour and it creeps up on you, but you have one more paper to print, one more pb&j sandwich to fix, one more lecture problem to review and then it’s past the hour of departure.

Rosie. I have to take Rosie – she’s the fastest. (The car is faster, but the walk to the law school from the parking lot is longer so bottom line – it’s Rosie, or be late!)

So why is it raining? Is it raining? Or not? Or is there sun? No? Well then what?

I set out. Drizzle. No drizzle. Then rain. And then not. A wet road, here and there. A grain machine, a line of deeply hued trees, a bend in the road.





I sing and I think – damn, these country roads are pretty!

But very quickly, I’m in city traffic. Watch those cars pulling in, stopping, imagine where you might go if this one suddenly slows down, watchful, watchful. Finally, I park, I run to class. Grab cup with tea, seating chart, run down, hoist up podium. With twenty seconds to spare.


It’s a full day. Too full. In fact, the whole week has been horrendously packed with work. It won’t slow down for me, not anymore, not until it’s over in December. I’m done grading midterms, but so what -- as of today, I have four dozen memos to read, grade, write comments for.

But it’s Thursday and my teaching, if not my work, ends for the week. I get on the wet saddle of Rosie and head for the café, just before it closes.

We buy dinner sandwiches. Don’t want to cook, don’t want to even think of what I should cook.

Ed rides his motorcycle just behind me, but I wave him on. Go home, go home, I need to pause and take a photo. Because the sky is stunning now in the early evening.





And in the last quarter mile, it’s over the top beautiful  -- a tad like those canvases you see for sale in dollar stores, touched up beyond credibility. Except tonight, it is for real.