Sudden Rainbows
I wrote this post for my new newsletter, Sit Spot. If you haven’t subscribed already, you can do so here. For those of you who have already subscribed, I apologize for this one-time double email!
There are three rainbows on my coffee table, two on the wall, one on the ceiling, five on the couch. There may be another one, shining on my nose for all I know. Early in the pandemic, a dear friend of mine sent me a box of suncatchers, each one like a golf ball made of crystal. They dangle in my windows, catching light, scattering color.
I have prisms to thank for much of the color I’ve experienced in recent days. It’s been a drab week in many regards—drab, and tinged with anxiety. Covid swept through our household again, beginning with my eleven-year-old (who has yet to bounce back), lightly brushing my other sons, and settling on me, where it settles still. It could be worse. It could also be better.
Illness and weather have joined forces to keep us indoors. A day of very cold rain gave way to a day of even colder rain, which in turn gave way to a night of freezing rain, followed by a dusting of snow. My mom asked me how much ice there was. I looked out my window at the gray and brown world. “Hardly any on the trees.”
Certainly, there wasn’t as much ice as the forecasters had called for. But the next day, when the sun came out and I felt well enough to venture outdoors, my perception changed. Against a backdrop of gray, I had seen nothing more than a few frozen droplets of water hanging from this or that branch. But surrounded by blue and flooded with light, entire branches illuminated, blinding me with their silver-white glow. I donned sunglasses (and mittens and a down coat) and reclined in my sit spot. From this new angle, ice droplets shimmered not only white but also red, blue, orange, green. Roy B. Giv danced in the crowns of Black Walnut and Silver Maple. The slightest movement of my head changed the colors, oranges dimming to white or white blossoming to indigo. I thought of glitter. Sprinkles. Christmas lights.
“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way,” William Blake wrote, ending with this conclusion: “As a man is, so he sees.”
Surely, our personality shapes our perception, and our perception in turn shapes our personality. But let’s be fair. Sometimes, a tree is a green thing that stands in the way. Sometimes, it’s even a brown thing that stands in the way. Whether or not that is the case for me in a given moment might say more about where I am standing than it does about who I am.
We have all stood—or sat or reclined or collapsed—in some pretty desolate places since this pandemic began. But no stance is permanent. No cloudy day lasts forever. Sun breaks through. Cold, gray ice splinters into rainbows. We might have to move a bit to see them. We might have to step outside or tilt our heads upward or shift this way or that. We might have to do this on the slimmest of faiths, the scantest of hopes. I didn’t leave my cozy house with the expectation of seeing rainbows.
Here's the thing about trees and truth. A tree is never just one thing. The truth of a tree stretches and spans like roots, a sprawling spectrum that can only be grasped one color at a time. If today is a brown day or a gray day or a day devoid of color, then that is your truth—for right now. But life reaches like a root, and tomorrow is a new day, and ten seconds from now, a whole new second will flash in and out of existence, more fleeting even than a rainbow. And if we are so inclined, if we incline our heads a little to the right or a little to the left or move a little beyond what is comfortable, this new second that we are in right now might flash with new truths, new colors, new feelings, new possibilities.
P.S. Have there been any sudden rainbows in your life lately? Or sudden ice storms? In case you’re wondering, my health was continuing to improve until this recent bout of Covid. I’m hopeful that I’ll be back on track again very soon!