DC Spring

I know that it must be the spring. Every morning, the sun creeps in a little earlier than the day before, like a small child entering its parents' bedroom because it can't quite wait for the day to start.

And so, every day, I wake a little earlier. I relish the morning hours. Since I was the small child, waiting for the day to start, I have felt like they were somehow consecrated. The long busy day is for the work at hand, and the evenings is for friendship and washing the dishes, but the morning is for me and for God.

It's raining today, and so the dawn light comes a little later and a little weaker than it otherwise might. So many days it rains. I have never quite gotten used to the wetness of DC springs: the full green leaves plastered to the sidewalk, heavy with a rainstorm; running from the the thunder while walking between metro stations; the buzz of cars along the highway through the puddles. In California, I always boast, I could rest assured of planning an outdoor party any time between Memorial Day and Columbus Day, without thought for rain ruining my gathering.

But this is a different place altogether, I remind myself, as I enter my seventh year. And the rain falls, a full-bodied and anointing kind of rain, though the winter is long past us now.