Today has been a most rainy Wednesday. I like rain. I don’t
like Wednesdays.
To be fair, this one couldn't have gotten off to a lovelier
start. What’s better than waking up at
five a.m. to the steady pounding of rain outside your open window and the realization
that you have one more hour of sleep? Just
after seven I bolted out the front door, somehow forgetting to grab a jacket in
the thrill of walking to the bus in an October monsoon, half tempted to ditch
the umbrella and go war-whooping and puddle-jumping down the hill. Downtown, the streets were awash with tiny
rivers and streaks of reflected red and green.
But then it was cold. And wet. And I was wearing short
sleeves. I clung to my umbrella, along with a vehement optimism (“I WILL love
this day!”) that began to fade by the second bus. By the time I got to work, the world had
shifted from “Wheeee! Puddles!” to “My
bones ache. I feel ninety years old.”
The rain slowed to a drizzle sometime in the late afternoon.
The rooftop of the empty building across from the Chick-fil-A drive-thru turned
into a gray lake dotted with scarlet and orange leaves. I fell asleep on the
bus home, hugging a library book and jerking uncomfortably awake every few
minutes because I’m always afraid I’ll miss my stop. (One of these days it really will happen -- I’ll probably just circle around State College
for hours, curled up happily in a back seat.)
Perhaps the whole I-don’t-like-Wednesdays thing stems in
part from my love of beginnings. Mondays are my favorite day of the week. New stories, new ideas, new possibilities, new projects, new
sights, new sounds, new colors – this is a Monday. If Monday is the gunshot at the start of the race, Wednesday is a-- I don't know, a charley horse or something. Starting things, often
leaving lots of messy trails and discarded ideas in my wake, is what I’m good
at. Endings are great too. Those are usually the cause
for much leaping and rejoicing, as well as anticipation for the next beginning
waiting to be discovered. The middle though… the never-ending middle, like that
part of a car trip where your butt falls asleep and you can’t stop asking, “Are
we there yet?”… that’s the hard part. At least for me.
To be fair, the middle is the best part of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and the most delicious thing about an Oreo, but they're not the first things that leap to mind. The middle makes me think of being stuck in between siblings
in the back seat of a packed car. That part of the movie in which I always fall
asleep. The hardest part of writing a story. Midterms, which have descended
with a vengeance. Oh, and Wednesdays of course. The idealist
in me wants every day to be an adventure, often resulting in a passionate avoidance
of blah days… or at least, refusing to acknowledge that a blah day is, in fact,
blah. But life is filled with ordinary days and quiet moments. Like today.
Today was a sleepy, drizzly, monotonous day (plus a terrible hair day
– thanks for that, weather). So maybe the true challenge is learning to
acknowledge those gray, achy-bones kind of day, and to recognize that stillness
is good for your soul. That the slow, steady middle is as valuable as a beginning and an end.
It has been a most rainy Wednesday, a never-ending day, an
“Are we there yet?” day. But I like rain. I like October. And I like that it’s
still warm enough to keep both windows open on wet, peaceful nights like this.
