Rainbows and Icecream

Surrounded by water on Galveston Island, we discovered that various geographic locations are characterized by different cloud formations. There, majestic mountains of white, cumulus clouds would circle our island, while clear blue skies shone down overhead.

This Michigan, June summer day, the sky out my kitchen window was a constant changing scene, fast forward-ing almost like those time lapse photographs on nature programs. One minute a dark, slate gray blue, and the next it seemed, Galveston-like, billowy mounds of pure white ice cream would move into view. Enormous heaps of it above the quivering leaves of the tall poplar tree at the back of our property.

When Emily phoned for us to meet them at the ice cream store after supper, the rain was pouring down in perfectly straight arrows... but it's Michigan and if you wait just a bit, the sun will come shimmering through. Sure enough, in the few minutes it took us to drive up to TCBY Yogurt, the rain did stop, and a wonderful double rainbow showed itself stretching from the clouds across the eastern sky to the blue clear in the south.

Greeting us at the curbside were a couple of sunshiny little live-wires, bouncing up and down with sparkling eyes at the prospect of Grammy and Dan-Dan plus ice cream, all on the same evening.

This must be what it's like to be grandparents. And rainbows always promise good things to come.