Ritual in the Rain

Despite knowing that the weathered boards of the deck will be wet and cold, I step outside in bare feet and turn east, toward the spot where the sun would be dangling were it not for a curtain of clouds.  The rain that teased snow started in the night with drops thick as cane syrup – fat and heavy and slow – and it continues this morning with indifference.  Rain don’t care.

I do this every morning, this brief inspection of the landscape, this quick review to make sure that the sycamore tree is still upright, that the field road is still winding up over the low rise, that the birds have, once again, found something about which to sing.  With just one or two deep breaths, whatever weight may have settled overnight falls away and I am somehow convinced that whatever insanity awaits me in the morning news, in the next text message, in my uncontrollable imagination, all shall be well.

This morning, though, it is cold and dark and I am not so sure.

Bending just slightly at my waist, I place my hands on the deck railing.  It is slick with rain, so I keep my eyes down as I stretch my heels, noticing that my hands have become my grandmother’s hands, thick blue veins creating a relief map of memory.  It is because I am looking down, away from the horizon, the sky, the future, that I see the spider web.  Spread across at least three deck spindles, the threads of the web are pendulous with lingering raindrops.  Moving ever so slightly in a breeze I cannot even feel, the drops are a thousand tiny prisms, diamonds, mirrors reflecting a thousand rays of silver gray light.  

What captures my attention, though, is the irregularity of the web.  Its sections are oddly sized – some narrow as a dagger and others wide as a fan.  The hub is off-center and the threads look more like yarn than filament.  It is, in fact, rather ugly.

As soon as the thought appears, I apologize.  To the spider, the web, myself.  The web is not ugly.  It is, like all of nature, reflective of the conditions in which it was created – the wind, the rain, the cold – and those conditions have forced into the web something far more important than beauty.  The web has been left with strength.

It will not last forever, this unique conglomeration of knots.  It will eventually give way to the wind, the rain, gravity because that is like all of nature, too.  But until it does it will shimmer in the light and quiver in the breeze and testify to what it means to persevere against the odds.

When I first began my morning ritual my parents were still alive.  Stepping outside each morning and turning east meant that I would see not just the sunrise, but their house.  I would see lights shining in windows and, occasionally, a truck backing out of the driveway headed to town for a tractor part.  I would be reminded that things were as they had always been, as they should be, and – without acknowledging the foolishness of the thought – as they always would be.

That I can now undertake this rite of awakening without bowed shoulders and deep sighs, that I can look toward the sun and the empty house with gratitude, that I can stand in the rain and look at a messy knot of a spider web with wonder is the reminder I need that all shall be well.

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