Oot and Aboot

I turned my face to the right and the sun shone a golden red through my closed eyelids, the warmth almost like a scald after months of nothing but distant, pale, watery white light. The passenger-side power window whirred downward, unused to the movement, and the wind swept in abruptly, bringing the smell of wet earth and growing green things. My hair whipped wildly, plastering itself across my mouth and tangling ferociously at the ends so that soon my fingers would not be able to comb through more than an inch or so before becoming snarled. I clutched my iPod, listening as Prince's voice came over the radio (volume at 8) and told me that he didn't want to stop 'til he reached the top because baby, you know it -- he's a star. It was evening. It was painless. It was spring, and I remembered.

Earlier in the day, I had tea with my friend Barb. We chatted about the weather, her children and granddaughter, our pets. At one point, we talked about our weekends and the gorgeous weather we had enjoyed. I told her that I had spent my Sunday working in the yard, even had a little pink around the edges of cheeks and on my forehead from the sun. The warmth had soaked into my sweatshirt, into my skin, until even my bones had a blazing moment of radiating heat for the first time in what seemed a century. I had stood, I told Barb, in the grass and mud, with my eyes closed and barely-steady legs planted, face tilted toward the sky, feeling the sun burn into me, baptize me, with it pure, pale-pink mark.

"The thing is," I told her. "The thing is that, ever since everything happened, I appreciate it all more. I understand it all more. I don't take it for granted, not a moment. Not a second." I felt embarassed to admit it; I felt even more embarassed that such a common event like standing -- standing! -- in my yard made form, even now in the retelling, a rush of hot tears behind my eyes.

Barb was silent for a moment, and took a long sip of tea out of her Eeyore mug. She looked at me. "What a gift," she said quietly.