Pregnant Sky

The earth has been so dry that in our back yard, deep crevices are carved into the ground below our crunchy grass. If you lean over these cracks, millions of tiny ants and roly polies swarm in these underground condominiums, and if you stand barefoot, and close your eyes and face it in the direction of the beating sun, you can feel the heat enveloping you from above while it creeps up the back of your heel and radiates towards your toes.

And finally, after barely any rain for a month, I saw the dark clouds looming in the west.

"Come to Mama," laughed my friend Jan, beckoning to the rain clouds. We were in her back garden, a lovely patch filled with leafy good things. In any direction, you see her efforts to keep the earth cool and moist so plants can eke out an existence during the dry summer.

The garden hose. Watering cans. Rain barrels.

But overhead, things looked more and more turbulent. We said our goodbyes to Jan, and kept looking skyward as we raced home in an attempt to reach our laundry, drying on the line. I jumped out of the car and immediately gathered my towels and sheets, wrapping my arms around their lovely warmth so I could spread them on my table and fold them, tuck them safely into the kitchen drawer and linen closet.

The sky got blacker. With our towels safely inside, we continued driving to the grocery store.

The pregnant sky is full of hope, anxious, excited, ready to burst with rain. The world stills in respect of the pregnant sky, and we all wait, feeling the electricity in the air and the anticipation of something we've been wanting for a long time.

The grocery list can wait. We stand in the parking lot, staring, slack-jawed, toward the heavens. Over my right shoulder, a man wearing his work out clothes is taking a video of this black sky, streaked with Mother Nature's paintbrush. Another couple stand nearby, pointing upwards. I want it to stay this way forever.

The rain does not come, but the clouds are changing every second, churning and tumbling closer and closer. The wind makes its entrance first, whooshing in our ears and flipping leaves up on end to expose their silver bellies. Everything feels awake and alive.

And then, a crack of thunder splits the air in half.

The rain has come.

Summer Pages

Almost two years ago to the day, I wrote this post, detailing the frustrations-turned-to-joys when taking small children to the pool. Two years later, we are still spending our summer evenings at the pool, something that's become a welcomed routine in our household. After a day of sweaty play and sunshine, we all head to the pool around sunset, to finish out the day in the cool waters of our community pool. The water is chlorinated, and patrolled by skilled and vigilant teen lifeguards who cling to their unlikely summer employment during this economic recession as tightly as they cling to their life-saving flotation devices.

But as parenthood has taught us, the drive towards independence is a tidal wave that can't be stopped by sentimentality. We tilt our heads and "Awww" at the sight of our kids splashing happily in the pool, but we dare not let them see us. They are older now, and we no longer have to chase after them or be ready to dive in at a moment's notice to bring a sputtering child back to the surface. In fact, last night, we didn't suit up at all. We were merely the chauffeurs. In our sandals and shorts, we sat like sentries in lounge chairs guarding the pile of towels, pool passes and goggles heaped lopsidedly on the deck.

The days of extreme parental supervision might be behind us, at least at the pool. My husband and I sat still, reading our books, lazily turning pages while our kids went off and did their thing.

He is reading Frank McCourt's Teacher Man, a searingly funny and poignant memoir of the Irish-born Pulitzer Prize-winning author, who taught English at various New York public high schools before penning his famous book, Angela's Ashes.

I've chosen The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown, the story of three adult sisters who return to live with their parents, each hiding their own secret, living in the shadow of their father, a professor of Shakespeare. The literary nods to William Shakespeare is a treat for the literature nerd that lives just beneath my skin.

I like this new chapter, the two of us reading side-by-side, occasionally laughing out loud, then stopping to read a paragraph or two to the other.

It reminds me of two toddlers, who play side by side, but are not really playing with each other, besides occasionally passing a block to the other or knocking down a tower the other is building.

If this is our summer, I like it. I like it very much indeed.