Between the Raindrops Shine the Rainbows

dedicated to the memory of Mattie Stepanek (1990-2004)

It has been raining for three days now. Not as a miserable downpour, but more like a slow and steady drizzle that reminds you of what water torture might be like. Forced to endure the constant, agonizing and melancholy sound of raindrops hurling themselves to their demise, it is easy to believe a rainy day is one of life’s most depressing events. But if look very carefully between the drops, and I mean very carefully, you never know what you might find. That’s where they keep the rainbows.
Not so long ago, I anticipated putting all of my stock in the four leaf clover scam. It all sounded so promising! Four leaf clovers were the tickets to better health, wealth, love and prosperity. But the longer I waited, the clearer it was that there were no four leaf clovers. I even hunted down the so-called farm source and discovered that the field was nothing more than a weed-infested lot and the ground itself was composed of some very questionable material. I learned you could not fall into a manure pile and come up covered in lucky four leaf clovers, both figuratively and literally. Don’t ask.
The next step in the quest let me by the nose to the Loquacious Rock with promised to grant you the gift of speech. How was I to know that this was yet another means to part fools from their common sense? You had to buy into the idea that crawling on all fours uphill to the great Loquacious Rock, then giving it a good solid head-butt was the key to verbal richness. It was impossible to make out the fine print that apparently warned you about the one little catch. There was no guarantee as to just what type of speech you would gain. Let’s just say now that I can’t talk about anything without someone saying “where the hell did that come from?” Search me; no not literally this time. Nothing is as solid as a rock.

Trudging back home in the rain, I should have been despondent. I was until I remembered an old trick some leprechaun told me about years ago when I was young enough to believe in those things. At least he said he was a leprechaun that night in the bar, and he did look a little like one, but that might have been the Kilkenny. But I digress. It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen a leprechaun in years. Had then been real or just a youngster’s dreams burst like a soap bubble on a hot sticky summer afternoon? I had not much left to love, and it was raining the perfect king of rain for leprechaun hunting. Even if that meant throttling him.>
I scanned the horizon before me. You have to look earnestly but not too hard for these things just can’t be forced. But with patience you can pick up something in between the rainbows. Wait! There they are! I see them! No, not aliens.

In between the drops was the most splendid sight of those tiny shimmering rainbows. Admittedly they were rather small, but they were there as sure as the rain was. So the tiniest of hopes were still there and they were ripe for the picking. No cost. No physical torture or sacrifice. I had simply forgotten how challenging it was to hear a leprechaun’s whisper.

The raindrops had been my own tears and yet I still had my rainbows close at hand. I don’t know what lies at the end of those rainbows, though a glass of Kilkenny would be nice. But I won’t find out unless I hop on a rainbow and ride it full-throttle, both literally and figuratively.