I don’t know if you’re in LA and noticed, but it’s raining outside. Again. Still.
This weekend, Joe and I were in Santa Monica on 3rd Street. We took Tyler for a ‘date’ and went to lunch and shopping. At his request we went to no museums and dutifully kept it completely un-educational in the institutional sense of the word. And it rained the whole time. Sometimes worse than others. If you timed it right, you could duck into a store right as the drops started really pelting, leisurely browse and then rejoin the throngs during a short reprieve of precipitation.
Of course we left the umbrella in the car. That only makes sense. So we did our fair share of ducking in and browsing things we might never have looked twice at. Like the Albert Einstein action figure. Actually, he deserved at least 2 good looks.
When I was young, my mom always carried little square packets in her purse about the size of a half a credit card. Magically, she would unfold one of them to unveil a full size clear plastic poncho. I would get so embarrassed running with her into Duke’s, the only store in town that sold Levi’s button fly 501s, with her in that ridiculous poncho through the rain. I would literally.nearly.die. Ah, the psyche at age 14. She outdid herself once when she ran out of little instant ponchos and put a used grocery bag over her head. A. Used. White. Grocery. Bag. Do you understand the import there?? Do you? I couldn’t look the people in the store in the eye. All 3 of them. And they all worked there. And 2 of them were over 70 and couldn’t even see her damp, bagged head anyway, but that wasn’t the point. My mom was in public with a white bag over her hair, tied near the base of her hairline under the boof. And I was totally trying to be cool and try on 501s so tight you couldn’t bend your legs after they were on. Or bend over to do anything without running the risk of popping a seam. Or even get up from the bed after lying flat on your back and wrestling them on in the first place. And for some reason, once I bought them and took them home and then washed them to make sure they were extra snug, I would sew the lower part from the knee down to make them tighter because that extra 2.5 inches that was flapping away from my skin made me nervous and had to be eradicated. It was a time of great concern for my own lower half and I had no extra energy to expend on my mom and her attempt to keep her hair dry at any cost. It was an afternoon I never forgot. I learned to become one with the rain and not need an umbrella so I’d never accidentally forget it and then want it and then not have a poncho and then wrap a bag around my head and embarrass myself and my posterity.
One of the times we ducked in and out, Joe asked if we were doing ok. Doggedly, I told him I was fine, thanx. I loved the rain. And Ty said the same but I think he meant it. I explained to Joe that I didn’t feel the need to separate myself from the gift of moisture falling from the sky and didn’t care for umbrellas. Or some other crap like that. Because then it really started raining and I swallowed hard and found myself asking the lady where Ty bought magic cards for an extra bag. A big one, please. I was going to put a bag over my head. And God laughed and made the bag neon orange.
ps. While in the ladies during lunch, I overheard two women in adjoining stalls talking seriously about a funeral they had just attended. In my usual completely irreverent fashion, I almost laughed out loud.
#1: How was Danny at the funeral? Didn’t you sit by him?
#2: Yes. Well, you know….he cried and then stopped. Cried and then stopped. Cried and then stopped. And then cried. Off and on. Pretty much through the whole opening prayer.
Yes. I’m most likely going to have to repent for this and many other similar occasions.