You know those days where everything is just busy? Not terrible, just terribly busy. Monday was one for me. Fairly typical, as Monday is the day before we go to press. Plus I had errands.

 

And one was the supermarket. I tried to wait out the early evening rain, and find a closer place to park, then wound up in the exact same spot. The rain had lessened, so I went in and, as usual lately, when a fellow customer who was coughing all the way into and audibly through the store finally was in the same aisle as I was, I knew, there but for the grace of God and this facemask, go I. 

 

Back outside, my groceries were getting a little wet. Maybe it would rinse them. And my luck turned around when I spotted the front of what I believed was my car, peeking out from a row. It sometimes takes a couple minutes to find it.

 

So I am heading there, focused, pushing my cart, and I see two shoppers briefly stopped together after one looked up and said something, and the other, now looking up also, said you don’t usually see both ends of the rainbow.

 

I don’t know if I stopped, too, but I definitely slowed, until I, too, could see the rainbow and track it surely enough from one end to the other. I kept looking at it again as I neared the car. Didn’t take a picture because it was a somewhat faded rainbow but you could still make it all out, and it was not striking enough to risk getting the phone wet. 

 

But I looked at it a little more before heading off.

 

There was nothing remarkable about this moment. And yet, everything about it was remarkable. When I saw the rainbow my fellow shoppers had seen, I said “Oh.” And in that Oh was part, I see what they see. But it was also that kind of Oh that says, I am reminded there is other stuff besides my stuff; other people who are having whatever kind of day they are having, too, and then, through the droplets, we were briefly all connected by this natural, scientific, magical sight we have seen before, but that still stops you, or at least slows you, and says, “Remember this? It is one of the awes of the world, and everyone nearby is looking at it as the whole world, and their worlds, continue to move.”

 

And for that moment, you can wonder who else is viewing it and where are they seeing it from, and all the places around the world that might also be having a rainbow, and the places and people you wish could have one right now, for the pause, and maybe some hope.

 

Week’s positive parting thought: See above.