Rainbows

A little over two months ago my Swedish friend Elin came to L.A. because the band her brother manages, Movitz, had a show as part of their U.S. tour. Elin invited me, and after 3 years of not seeing each other, we hung out and had one of the best nights I’d had in a long time. Some people just click.

The next morning I woke Elin early, fed her some breakfast, and walked her out to the trailer where everyone else had stayed. The guys were all asleep, except for her brother. “I’ll see you when I see you,” we both said smiling. I gave her a hug, shook her brother’s hand, told them how to get to the freeway, and watched their RV drive down my small side street headed towards San Francisco. I may never see her again.

6 months ago, holed up in my small back room in my old friend’s house in Atwater Village, I wrote about fall. I wrote about the leaves, and the changing of them, the dying of them, the dancing of them. I wrote about the cold, and about the warmth of the season to come, the meals, the holidays…I wrote about Minestrone soup, and that was comforting, nostalgic, and reflective. For those of you that read this regularly…can you believe that 6 months have come and gone? They will come and go again and again, twirling themselves round and round, to no end that I or you shall ever see. I used to spend my summers thinking about my falls, and my winters consumed with longing for my springs. Today I’m happy for the summer nights, and when they die into falling leaves I sip my soup and smile.

I think that when we are young, we have images of the eternal, hopes for the enduring, the lasting. We want to know that some things are forever—that love, that memories, that friendships, that the essence of people will remain the same, that they will always be. My 7th grade yearbook is filled with people writing, “Don’t ever change.” I remember being that age and thinking the same.

But things change, times change, we change. Things are not eternal in the sense that we as children believed they could be, in the sense that we as adults wish they could be, in the sense that we in our later years will accept that they could never have been.

There’s a scene in the movie American Beauty, when Ricky and Jane are watching a 15-minute video of a plastic bag blowing in the wind. “Sometimes,” he says as he holds her, “there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in.” I felt that my first fall at UMASS, watching the leaves and all their changing colors. I kept snapping pictures, because each tree was more beautiful than the next, and I wanted to capture it, I wanted to remember it, I wanted to hold onto it. All my pictures fell short.

Have you ever chased a rainbow? Once, when I was 10, my mother, my sister, and I were driving in rural Mexico. There had just been a heavy storm. Dark clouds still hung over the lush valley through which we were driving, but a sliver of light broke through ahead, creating a giant rainbow over the valley. “Mom, mom!” we both screamed, “can we go to the rainbow? Please!” And being the good mother that she is, she entertained us. We drove down onto a dirt road, through maize fields, but the rainbow kept shifting. “That way!” “No, that way!” Jessica and I kept shouting, our faces plastered to the car windows trying to track it. After 15 minutes, we finally gave up, got out of the car, and learned a very valuable lesson: You can’t catch rainbows.

We are so scared. We’re scared that this might not last, we’re scared of loss, we’re scared of forgetting, we’re scared of being forgotten, and because we’re scared, we try our hardest to hold onto everything. But we’re greedy fools out chasing rainbows, and in worrying about catching the rainbow, touching the rainbow, holding the rainbow, we miss the majesty of the rainbow itself.

And what if you could? What if you could take a slice of that rainbow, stick it in your pocket and take it home? Where would you put it? On the mantle over the fire? In your closet? Your garage? You’d take it out on lonely nights, and look at it, but it would never be the same, because the fact is, beauty dies once it’s caged.

Times pass, people die, friendships break. But before that time passes, before that person dies, before that friendship breaks, they are special, they bring us joy, they teach us about life, about love, about understanding and compassion. That has to be enough.

Spring is here now. The days are longer, the nights are shorter, the buds are budding, the girls are laughing, the breeze is blowing, and I am good. Spring is here today, and it’ll be gone tomorrow, but while it’s here, I’ll take a book out to the park, and read under a swaying tree.

And all that comes, and all that goes…just let it be.