a polka dot umbrella.

February 26, 2008

There’s never a question of whether or not it’s going to rain in Manizales.  The only question is when.  Will it be a morning shower, an afternoon sprinkle, or a torrential downpour that lasts all day?  Because, my friends, the rain is inevitably coming.  Last semester it nearly got the best of me, nearly washed me away.  And then I went home for awhile.  And I brought back the best present ever.

Ada and  I have been friends since before I had braces and before she learned that flat irons were magic.  I saw my first concert with her (Garth Brooks in Starkville).  We went to our proms together and danced those nights away while our dates held our shoes.  We spent the day before we left for college listening to the soundtrack of highschool, letting the memories swirl out the open windows, sobbing uncontrollably at our impending separation.  We repeated that cycle the day before I stood next to her while she was wearing a wedding dress.  She peeled wall paper off the walls of my first house and picked up the pieces of my trampled heart a thousand times rather than saying, “I told you so.”  She’s watched me leave the country more than once and been waiting with arms wide open for my homeward journies.  She’s laced up running shoes just to spend time with me and chased me out countless doors with mascara in her hand.  We’ve been weathered by years and distance, heartbreaks, losses, missed chances and shattered hopes, but all the while she’s been there.  Dusting off the dirt, wiping off the tears.  She’s been my sunshine.  Today was no different.

It was a morning shower.  Dreary and cold.  A hint of the day to come.  People rushing by, buses blaring their horns, a crowd of black and gray umbrellas on the Avenida.  And then there was me.  Standing beneath orange and pink and purple polka dots.  My Ada.  My sunshine.

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