By Joe Walker
The sky has been jealous of me lately. On several days over the past few weeks I’ve awaken to gray skies and the sound of raindrops tapping on my roof. One of the first things I do when I wake up is look out my window. Seeing rain clouds makes me blue. Silly gray sky, there’s no need to be green. You simply read my color wrong.
My calendar reads May but this confusing Michigan weather suggests otherwise. April showers have carried over, followed by tagalong cold gusty March winds. According to the date it’s late-Spring, yet the season appears tardy. When is the sunshine and warmth – a much-anticipated precursor to Summer – going to show up?
My tulips have been wondering the same thing. As I somberly left for work three days ago I realized I’d forgotten my watch. “This is going to be one of those days,” I thought to myself. Before re-entering my house to retrieve it I noticed the depressed tulips under my windows. Their long green stems stood up tall while their heads drooped toward the ground, rainwater trickled off their pinkish-purple pedals. I don’t have a green thumb and have never claimed to understand how plants communicate with us other living creatures. But at that moment body language of these tulips became loud and clear to me.
The stems, pointing to the gray sky above, asked if I’d seen the slightest glimpse of sunlight lately. I hadn’t, so I apologized. The pedals, aimed at the ground, told me where they were headed: A final resting place, shriveled up on the dirt and grass below. Like me they can’t survive on H2O alone. I offered these tulips my sincere condolences.
One day before Mother’s Day weekend began, the local news meteorologist – Dude Whats-his-face – said we’d enjoy “a weekend of sunshine and warm weather.” His Doppler Radar must have been offline. It rained all three days and every day thereafter. It also got colder! Two days ago as I stepped out on my porch to check for mail I noticed my tulips still hanging their heads. Shivering in the chilly wind they no longer reached for the sky. The unseasonably dreary weather robbed these tulips of their will to stand, forcing them to lie face down on soaked green blades. Only the sun could cause a stick-up.
Today the sky was clear: An endless above of blue with sunshine to boot. The cloud cover finally broke, and I broke right along with it. When I awoke this morning I had come down with a cold. Great. Looking out the window I saw it was sunny outside. My disposition wasn’t. I was the gray one now. When I got home from work my tulips were standing, not straight but at least they were up and alive. At that moment their body language became loud and clear to me.
Remember this: We can’t control the weather, so why complain about it? Don’t let it – or any other curveball life throws – get you down. The sun will come out eventually. It will warm up; we will see flowers bloom. Besides, with so many of our other natural resources dwindling we could use all the water we can get. We also have the option of moving to a consistently nicer climate. A few cloudy days is not going to kill us, even if we feel as though we can’t stand it. My tulips thought the same thing. They just needed to get over their cold.
New Resolution #48: Hakuna Matata
