Grey Matter

The sky held its breath this afternoon. Charcoal hung heavy against the sunlit houses. Illuminated colors seemed all the brighter, all the more iridescent in contrast to the steely gray of the rain-laden clouds. I tried to take a photograph, but I couldn't capture the expanse of it. Instead, I waited for the sky to exhale and release the cold pellets of rain held deep within its belly.

Hours later, I'm still waiting.

The clouds have pushed themselves across the sky, the sun, what little there was of it, slipped behind the mountains, and still no rain.

It'll come, I know, just as it did last night and the night before. The pounding of it woke me up each time and I rolled over in my warm bed to dream of rafts in rough whitewater and swimming deep beneath the lake.

This morning I woke up to read about the symptoms of menopause, not because of the rain or my dreams, but because of my dry skin and pulsating headaches. They were both on the list along with a racing heart, irregular menstruation, and night-sweats, all of which I'm experiencing.

I'd like to think there is a connection between the long winter of this spring and my crawl beyond middle age, but I have yet to figure out the significance. My dreams are unclear as well and often they are a perfect reflection of what's on my mind or trapped deep within it.

The water dreams happen a lot for me as do the dreams of riding in a car that I'm either supposed to be driving though I'm not in the driver's seat or dreams of my teeth falling out one chunk at a time. My mother, a member of her own dream group, would say I have issues with control and my therapist would say, in Jungian fashion, that I am the water, I am the car, I am my teeth, but even knowing all of the possible interpretations doesn't unravel the tangled web I wake with every morning.

Most likely it has to do with transition and there, perhaps, is the connection between this afternoon's sky and my current life -- we are both holding our breath. I shall hold my breath, I fear, for the next 5 1/2 weeks, the time I have left "in the trenches" of my last days as a teacher. Exhaling means release and I am not at the place where I can release myself from the responsibilities of another busy end of the year.

This morning, the weather forecaster on the radio talked of a 40% chance of precipitation. That's kind of how I feel -- a 40% chance of relaxation. A 40% chance of letting go. A 40% chance of release.

When the clouds hung like velvet steely drapes this afternoon, the 40% felt imminent.

Then nothing. No rain. No hail. No pellets of sleet. Just a cold chill growing colder and the feeling that the sky was as heavy as a bank vault door.

Only without a combination to unlock the safe. Thick metal between one world and the next.

This sounds depressing, but I didn't see or feel it that way. Instead I felt anxious, but not in a bad way. It felt more suspended just like that place between a breath in and breath out. An extended anticipation. Almost calm, but with a slight tug of tension when the lungs are full, expanded and the breath pushes for release.

I can't photograph that either.

I walked the dog to the first day of the Farmer's Market. It's about an hour walk and with each step I worried about not having enough warm clothes or getting drenched when the clouds opened up just far enough from home to make the walk back miserable. When we got to the Market, I waited for Ann to join us and ate my vegetable tamale and sipped my ice-cold lemonade while Rubin played with the ice cubes I tossed him. Still no rain. I huddled against a tree and tried to catch the glimpses of sun that pushed through the sheets of metal sky.

Ann arrived, ate her tamales and we walked back to the car to avoid the rain.

But still no rain.

We came home, turned up the furnace, watched some TV while drinking hot cocoa and still the rain waited.

The sky will breathe again.

And so will I, but for now I'll head up to bed, wait for the sound of rain on the skylight and the water to fill my dreams.