I love the sky on those late-April, early-May days, the days that are warm and sunny, temperatures reaching up above seventy. In my childhood, those days came sooner, which makes them all the more precious to me now.
But yes, the sky. I’m talking about the kind of day where there are large patches of cloudless blue. The bit overhead—always the directly above, right ahead, it seems—is that rich, vibrant blue. It’s the kind of blue you expect when you look at a crayon, though when you put the crayon to paper the result is faded, like the kind of fading from the sky’s blue into the horizon. Off in one direction or other, there will be wispy clouds, but those don’t matter.
What matters is that bold, bright blue directly overhead.
It’s the kind of blue that promises summer, but somehow has a softness to its intensity and saturation that’s uniquely spring. It has an electricity to it that the winter sky never has, even on the clearest day.
It’s such a nice day today that I’m working outside, even though the blue of the sky is dreaming of adventure and promising plans for the summer to come.
Every year, when the sky turns this color, everything feels full of possibility.
I’m no poet. I’ve always had a weak visual imagination, to put it generously. But, year after year, I’ll always stop to look at this spring sky and feel like a kid under it, all over again.
And if the day ever comes where that blue stops being a marvel, I’ll know either something is seriously wrong, or it’s time for me to move on to a different planet.
For now, though, and for these spring days, happiness is a specific shade of blue.
