I sometimes think that if I had been born to see rainbows in unexpected places it would be a life worth lived.

As I wandered down the road I wondered how many tears we shed in life?  Is it a roomful of tissue boxes, toilet paper, serviettes, napkins, sleeves and hands? And the reasons always seem on a balanced scale.

A cloud bow seen

A parent lost

Overwhelming love of something/someone

A relationship bump/loss

And randomly, Mary’s words came to me floating up through some stashed memory:

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.” Mary Oliver

The Okapis stared at me as warily as we sometimes look at life; I tread carefully past them at the conservation fence.

I had just finished reading the Book Thief and my mind was on all the things that moved me. My father’s stories of the War were very much alive in these pages. I could have been reading about him and his family. I was in tears when I put the book down. Weeping for a few reasons. 

We might as well add all other reasons to weep when we actually do. 

So I gave room for this. My pug looking at me with equally mournful deep brown eyes. She licked the tears that dropped onto my hands.  And of course a few words began to shimmer round me, the road and beach called to build these thoughts into something I could share.

Frogs clicking in the river, and eventually, ocean roaring, as I sat, a miracle visited itself upon me.

I looked up, and saw the clouds haloed round the sun in fractured rainbow patterns. I think I stopped breathing for a while before my heart welled in deep acknowledgement of this silent blessing. I sometimes think that if I had been born to see rainbows in unexpected places it would be a life worth lived.

My return crunching feet were still full of what I had read, but I was also carrying a container of Cloud Bows.