Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

Driving to my sister's last week, I hit a mild little storm. As the rain slowed to an occasional drizzle, I entered a flat, green valley. The clouds were fluffy and high, and the sun was preparing to burn through.

The conditions were exactly the same as when I saw a rainbow in Canada with my then husband, on our honeymoon journey. The bright sun, the occasional rain. A rainbow was coming!

I willed the sun to peek out from behind the clouds and make magic. The sun popped out, bright and high. I searched the sky for a rainbow and then remembered that you have to look opposite the sun. So I turned and there it was. Breathtaking.

A fat rainbow arced over the low hills, touching the grass of the green valley, between the spare farm buildings. Against the flat gray sky behind it, the rainbow shimmered with delicate grace.

I pulled over immediately, filled with calm bliss. Other cars zipped past. It was as if nature was having a playful game of peekaboo to see who would notice. And I was the only one who did.

Although the bright, calm, crisp weather, the fat but delicate rays of color, although all of this was the same, in Canada we were in a pine forest. We pulled onto the wide shoulder, as did a half dozen others. Everyone stared at the sky in joy, then exchanged secret glances, sharing the mysterious beauty. My husband did a happy jig.

Here, it was me and my dog, who wouldn't look, even when I pointed. I remembered I had a camera in the back of my truck and decided to take pictures. But just as I was about to open the door, a tractor trailer threw up a wall of water and wind that shook the truck. Maybe it was not such a good idea to get out. I reminded myself that photographs of rainbows seldom turn out well. Unless you're a professional photographer with a knowledge of filters, you get a gray, washed out picture that looks nothing like what you saw. And worse than that, your memory becomes the photograph. You remember the rainbow as the dull, sickly wisp in your photograph and not as a sparkling, amazing presence.

As we drove away, flipping through the stations, my radio stopped just long enough on a random song for the line, "The rainbow begins to rise."

Although the rainbow was soon, sadly, out of sight, the low green Pennsylvania mountains trapped wispy, low clouds and made for a fantastic special effects show.

The sky became an incredible layer of all shades of blue. A cobalt wash formed the background, growing deeper, richer blue near the top. Another wash of white covered the bottom half of the sky, with some cobalt peeking through. And then the clouds, gold and violet of all shades, as the light hit them from different angles. It was like the most magnificent, ethereal watercolor you could imagine. A watercolor by the gods.

But even as I was driving through all of this beauty, I was kicking myself for not taking the rainbow picture. Why do I always do this, I asked myself. Why not just enjoy the moment? Why kick myself over perceived failures instead of appreciating the true joy of living?

This has to stop now, I told myself. I've got to stop doing this to myself. One moment, I'm blissfully enjoying beauty, and a few minutes later I start blaming myself for failing to take a picture which would have been only a gray imitation.

A song came on the radio, about how everything's going to be fine. It's going to be all right. You don't have to impress anybody, and just be yourself, the song said. The song was right.

I don't remember how long my husband and I watched that rainbow in the sky over that Canadian pine forest. I don't remember driving away, although I knew we did. I wonder, if I'd snapped a photo, if my memory of that moment would be less magical, more frozen. Just like, when I look at photographs of him, I see now only the mentally fractured individual who would leave me in favor of the voices who spoke to him from trees. I see now, in those pictures, something unformed in his eyes, a directionless wind. His insanity is so clear to me now, and yet I remember how I saw him when I took those photos. Back then, I saw a simple soul in love with nature. I didn't see yet that it masked a deeper chaos.

Just as I was about to reach my destination, the atmospheric conditions were almost perfect for another rainbow, except for a heavy cloud blocking the sun. As soon as I saw that, I was ecstatic. A chance to be redeemed! I willed the clouds, and willed the clouds, and they refused to move.

And then I laughed. Because I remembered the best way to capture the moment, for me, was to do it exactly the way I'm doing it. In words.

Copyright 2003 by Alyce Wilson

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