by Valerie Zwald

Created on: March 02, 2007   Last Updated: May 22, 2007

It is among one of my earliest memories - I was maybe three or four years old, and I was on an outing with my parents and grandparents. We were out for a drive along the North Oregon coast, not an unusual occurrence in our family. Not having much in the way of money, taking a drive was our pastime of choice on most weekends. We would go up in the woods and drive along in the vastness of the trees, or wind around the bends and curves of the mountains. So much of my world was viewed through a car window, and this day, as we wound away from the sandy dunes of one of the many beaches we frequented, I was again looking out the window. On this particular afternoon I was tired - probably awake past my nap time - and I was stretched out on the back bench seat of our family car, looking up at the sky. Perhaps my mind would have wandered, and maybe I would have even drifted off to sleep, if it were not for the fact that I was so entranced by the sight before me. The sky was blue, deep blue. The deepest shade of blue I had ever seen painted across the heavens. Even at that tender age I felt humbled at the beauty above me, and I remember feeling like I was witness to God's very creation. It was the first time I had ever felt like there was something bigger and grander than I, and that I was just a small speck in the bright, beautiful universe. I have spent many, many years since looking for a sky that deep and blue and meaningful.

A dozen or so years later, I think it was early spring, I found myself under a very different sky. Angry gray clouds swirled and blew around overhead as several fellow students and I waited for our bus to arrive. We had put in our day of academic drudgery, many of us weighed down by books and backpacks and teenage angst, and we could not wait to see the flash of yellow on the horizon that meant we could finally escape. However, on this day, for some mechanical reason or other, our bus was running late. All of the other students had been whisked off in their respective banana-colored chariots, or were lucky enough to have "wheels" of their own, and took off without a backward glance toward those of us still stuck. Perhaps two dozen of us stood waiting, some grouping off into comfortable familiar bunches, others choosing to mill about singly, staring anxiously toward the road or strategically placing nose in book to prevent any unnecessary socialization. With no warning, a hard rain began to fall. Not small sprinkling drops, but huge California

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