Walking on Clouds
Coming home from Aunt Doris' house with my father the day after Christmas, the sky was filled with a cloud bank that stretched all the way to the horizon--big, blue clouds, so dark and solid, they looked like mountains. I remember dreaming about living in the mountains when I was a little girl and pretending on days like these that the clouds actually were mountains. I always thought they were so beautiful, and after visiting my great aunt's cottage in western North Carolina when I was about ten, I decided to go to college somewhere in the mountains. Life-long allergy and asthma problems had miraculously disappeared for the duration of my entire visit, and I found her place to be simply magical. Flowers and plants she had nurtured probably twenty years ago still flourished all about her home. A steep pathway down from her cottage led to a small bridge over a tranquil brook. You could smell the spearmint she had planted along the way, and I remember seeing a wild rabbit happily hopping about through all the lush green.
"Looks like you could walk on them," my dad said.
"What?"
"The clouds--they look like you could walk on them."
No one else had come with us that day to visit my aunt. To people who don't care to get to know her better, it's easy to mark her as a mean old woman. But she has a really good heart. Unfortunately, the rest of my family takes visiting my mother's sisters more seriously.
I told him about pretending they were mountains when I was younger, and how I always thought it was such a beautiful phenomenon when it happened in North Carolina. I can't remember another time I was alone with my father and reflected about something so simple but so wondrous. Now I need only look out my window to enjoy the splendor of mountains here in Maine.
"Looks like you could walk on them," my dad said.
"What?"
"The clouds--they look like you could walk on them."
No one else had come with us that day to visit my aunt. To people who don't care to get to know her better, it's easy to mark her as a mean old woman. But she has a really good heart. Unfortunately, the rest of my family takes visiting my mother's sisters more seriously.
I told him about pretending they were mountains when I was younger, and how I always thought it was such a beautiful phenomenon when it happened in North Carolina. I can't remember another time I was alone with my father and reflected about something so simple but so wondrous. Now I need only look out my window to enjoy the splendor of mountains here in Maine.