Good Morning Sunshine

When I was somewhere around ten years old, I started asking myself a question. I asked myself this question on a regular basis for years (honestly, I still ask myself on occasion). What I ask/asked myself was, “What kind of day am I?” My response was always, “Rainy.” As a child, I asked myself this question over and over again because I desperately wanted to hear myself give a different response. I didn’t want to be a rainy day: all dark and wet and cold. I longed to hear myself say, “A bright sun shiny day!,” because I desperately wanted to believe it.

I have very vivid memories of my mother waking me for school in the mornings. She woke me by coming quietly into my room and gently whispering in my ear, “Good morning Sunshine.” Eventually, I learned to awaken myself early feeling blissful anticipation and a wonderful willing emptiness in my ear as it waited for my mother to come in and fill it full to overflowing with her whisper. My ear perched on itself, hungering to absorb those words and release them into my heart. It was my child’s version of that first cup of coffee in the morning. My body needed it to face the day.

For some reason around my tenth year, my mother stopped waking me in this manner. Over time, I gradually felt the clouds accumulate as they do on those beautiful sun shiny summer beach days. For me, the dark clouds rolled in from China or some other foreign place, broke open, and released their drops of wet. It seemed that everyone scattered to find shelter.

Perhaps if I had been a different kind of child or had grown up in a different kind of family, I could have talked to my mother in my 10 year-old way and let her know how much I needed my daily love transfusion. Instead, I remember consciously making the decision to stop crying because my little girl mind believed that if I stopped crying; I would also stop the rain.

And my mother would be able to come out from under the shelter she ran to and once again remind me that I am full of sunlight.

Twenty three years later, I dreamt of one of those silver bullet shaped mobile homes. When I entered it, I noticed that the walls were encased in layers of ice. The ice was so thick that the only way to navigate through the home was via a very narrow passage down the middle. In this dream, I had a blowtorch in my hands, and I announced (to no one in particular). “On these walls are all the frozen tears I never shed. I intend to shed them now.”

But I didn’t…until this year.

In this year, I have weathered all kinds of tears. I have cried icy hot tears full of anger and rage. I have cried bitter tasting tears of hail full of old resentments. I have cried slippery uncontrollable tidal waves of torrential tears full of grief. I have cried large pendular droplets of downpour tears full of lost opportunities for love. I have cried sharp projectile sudden squall tears full of guilt that left my eyes as quickly as they appeared. I have cried strong love-rich April shower tears full of nourishment for the soil of my soul.

Until finally, and thankfully, I cried those happy-sad bittersweet sun shower tears that accompany a brightly shining sun. Sun shower tears remind the world that rain and sun can live together simultaneously, and when they do, they gift the world a beautifully colored rainbow prism full of limitless magical possibilities.

I now recognize that I am weather. I am all of it. I am full with it. It makes me who I am.

So, "What kind of a day am I?" “A bright sun shiny day!” (with a possibility of rain).

And my ten year old is just fine with that.