It has been raining in Chicago for at least forty days and forty nights. Rainiest May, and I’m sure soon to be June, in Chicago’s recorded history. I have thought often of the Bible verse in Genesis I remember from my childhood, ” I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made I will destroy from off the face of the earth.”
And there have been days I have believed this will happen. Dark and dreary days that bring on dark and dreary thoughts. Too much time to think and not do. Too much time to dwell on the inside and not the outside. Of me and the world.
So if Noah does come, which looking out my once more rain-speckled window I believe he can, I will stand on my street corner and wait to be picked up as he floats by. Assuming I will be one of the chosen two to make it on the ark. Which is a pipe dream that a crumbling old broad as myself would be chosen over some young thing full of possibilities, ready to make new generations.
But why not hope? It’s either that or buy a new umbrella to replace the seven that have turned inside out over the last month, full of broken spines and drenched spirit.
Which brings me to something my brother recently said about my blog. He noticed, and I give you the CliffsNotes version of his comment, that sometimes my blog is a reflection of a more optimistic me than the one I project in my daily life.
That stopped me for a moment. I pondered. I gave him that. This blog is at times a version of me, and the world, as I’d like them both to be.
But then again, why not?
If I slosh in the back door, one more time soaked in rain water to my very core, mud sliding under my flip flops I insist on wearing because it is summer, for God’s sake, and I shake myself off and think a little sunshine in my head. Well, so be it. Because behind the false bravado of tough and grown up and realistic and accepting, that is who I am.
Hopeful. That’s in my heart, whatever words or thoughts or judgments I present to the world day to day, person to person, at the gas station, in the grocery store. I am always looking to be something more than I was yesterday; a bit better tomorrow.
I think we all want to be the best versions of ourselves in this life. And that is a good thing. Because it would be the very messy place if we all walked around being our unguarded, least pleasing selves.
No, that unpleasant person, I save for my family, my husband and my kids. And I thank them.
For accepting me on the muddled, cloudy days as well as the ones full of sunshine.
Although I’m not sure I would let Noah interview them before he stops.