Rainy State of Mind

There's no looking forward to stepping out in the rain for a very necessary trip to the grocery store. I grab the only umbrella I can find: The expensive one that shouts irony in its inability to stay open.

I decide not to fill up with gas yet, to avoid watching the dollars and cents grow and grow and make me feel so poor. I walk up and down the aisles in the store and marvel at how much everything costs, ponder taking every sub teaching job in sight so I can afford luxuries like pitted kalamata olives and orange juice in the carton. I buy them anyway.

We commiserate in the check out line, complain about the weather while also agreeing the rain is needed. We shake our heads about Texas and hope for the best. It's pouring hard now. I make an attempt to push my cart through the parking lot and hold the faulty umbrella as it slowly closes around my head and eyes. Surely I look like an idiot.

I can't see ahead of me and yet I have a sudden and overwhelming feeling that I am exactly where I'm supposed to be, doing precisely what I'm supposed to do. And this rush of happiness has nothing and everything to do with the rain and broken umbrellas and quotidian tasks. I find myself a welcome visitor to the world, and grateful for it all.