Chalk before the rain

A child draws on the driveway with chalk while the sky goes grey. Everyone can see the rain coming, the child included. She draws anyway: a house with a chimney, a sun, a dog, her name underneath. When the rain takes it, she howls for one minute. Then she starts again, or goes in to dinner.

Most adults handle the rain another way. Some plan everything: the sleep scored, the steps counted, the year planned to the quarter and the quarter to the week. Some stop planning and scroll, and the evening goes wherever evenings go. They look like opposites. They do the same job. Both keep you from looking at what will not last, and each feeds the other: a day of tracking everything ends on the couch with the screen, and a night on the couch ends with a promise to track everything tomorrow.

That is a strange line from a writer who also says eat your bread with joy, until you see why he sends you to the funeral. It is the one room where nobody pretends. The living lay it to heart there, which is to say they get ready. The planner and the scroller both skip that room, and they meet the hard days with no practice: the morning the last kid drives away, a friend's funeral, the birthday with the zero in it.

Somewhere in the middle years most of us stop drawing because it is going to rain. The trip waits until the market settles. The toast waits until it can be perfect. The phone call waits until the other person calls first. Life is gift, not guarantee. Nothing says the friend will be at the table next year, or that your body will keep doing what it does. Planning has its place. Planning as a way to turn a gift into a guarantee does not work, and it keeps you from receiving what is here today.

So draw the house. Know the rain is coming, the way the child knows, and draw it with the chimney and the sun and your name underneath. When the rain takes it, howl for one minute. Then start again, or go in to dinner.