Comin’ Down on a
Sunny Day
It is the second week of April, on an obscure hill in
nowhere Italy. I was not the only one
struck by what happened just a little while ago.
I am five thousand miles away from where I grew up. I find the climate here reminiscent of
northern California…as I lived in the San Francisco area for three years once,
a long time ago.
At any rate, I have a so clear memory of being in my living
room…in Commack, New York (Long
Island)..I was probably about twelve…about the time when my parents divorced,
only no one ever said THAT word or
broached the subject, so I was just supposed to understand via osmosis what the
hell was going on. My grandparents were
visiting (my mother’s parents, I barely knew my father’s mother)..and we were
in the living room…ahh…the living room….with the soft lilac wall to wall carpet
that only looked good just after it was vacuumed because it had a pile to it
that moved and changed with each foot step and drove me out of my mind. I hated that carpet and I hated the
color. The walls, three of them, were
white, and one, the front one that faced out to the street, was a deep
pink. There were mostly pink floral
curtains with an underlay of white sheers…layers, mind you…layers. We had the old sectional couch out there…a
semi circle…in shades of pink tweed….a wall size mirror from Brooklyn behind
it…the piano and the stereo.
The stereo was about to become my best friend, but I did not
know that at the time. At this time,
Robert Goulet was singing, and I didn’t mind at all. I thought he was wonderful and also
wonderfully handsome.
I was sitting in the side chair..also a tweed, but more gray
than pink. I was in my raincoat. It was reversible, solid blue one way and a
blue print the other. It was Spring. April.
My parents split had happened the previous October…their
anniversary. How a propos. How typical of men.
I was there that afternoon, in that big, comfy chair…and the
sun was shining in the back dining room window….filling the room…with so much
light….pure, bright light. It was so
beautiful.
And I remember that the sky was not so…..beautiful…it was
sort of gray…and cloudy..and the day promised showers ( I was in my raincoat
after all) but the sun was shining through nevertheless. Bright and pale yellow. It was spring. Spring.
I had not seen that in so very long. So very, very long that I thought, perhaps,
it would never happen again. Spring stopped being the harbinger of warmer weather. In fact, Spring simple stopped altogether. It seemed that winters wore on and on and then suddenly, one day, it would get hot and stay that way for months. It was impossible to enjoy the daffodils, the dogwoods, gradual greening of the landscape.
But it happened this evening.
On our little hill, tucked away in nowhere Italy…it happened. A spring sky, a spring sun, a spring somewhat
rainy but not really, sort of…day. The
light. The pale but bright light…birds
singing their little hearts out. Spring
like the springs of my youth. It took my
breath away. I tried to capture it with
our poor contemporary excuse for a camera….I doubt that I did, but I
tried.
The sight made my heart briefly sing….and remember those
springs of the past…those normal springs….when we never questioned if they
would ever end. How could they ever
end? Nature can always be counted on…as
sure as the sunrise, right?
It is just a brief sojourn and I know it…..I’m grateful,
though, to have witnessed it once again.
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