Of Meaningful Clouds, Collapsing Worlds, and Small Convictions

Me and Shannon are sitting in the grass. It prickles the underside of my legs. It looks so soft and plush, yet when you get right down to it, it’s stiff and stubborn. But we still lay down every once in a while on a carpet of grass and make meaning out of the clouds. We’re all a little like the grass and the clouds, stiff and stubborn, torn up and meaningless, profoundly wondrous.

It’s been 18 years since Shannon married me. We’re both content to sit in the shade in a park and eat Mexican burritos for our anniversary. Three brothers and a sister run around on a soccer field way over there, they don’t have a soccer ball, they’re just running and pushing each other over and laughing. It’s 5:30 in the afternoon and the world is convulsing around us, I guess.

Glossy photos seemed like a good idea at the time. No, wait, they actually didn’t. (West Jordan, Utah; May 2002)

I tell Shannon St. George isn’t where I thought we’d spend our anniversary this year. Then I think how nothing really turned out like I thought it would when we married back then, on a day that couldn’t decide whether it was winter, spring, or summer. Blinding white clouds billowed in the blue above, brilliant flowers bloomed in the dirt below, a mean thunderhead dumped rain and hail all over the mountains, then the sun peeled back the storm and poured its shimmery self all over the sparkling world. But it couldn’t touch Shannon, it fell ashamed and outdone on the ground in front of her, then reverently picked itself up and gathered in a halo around her dress and just spun there, admiring this small star burning at the center of a universe that didn’t even know what it was missing. No, nothing is really like I thought it would be then. It’s a lot better.

Still dressing snazzy. (St. George, Utah; May 2020)

And it doesn’t have anything to do with the rise or decline of the civilization I’m part of, or any other civilization, for that matter. There’s so much suffering and so much joy. Color and gray. Sun and rain. Some days are like my wedding day, they can’t decide. But I think days and hearts are big enough for all of it, and they’re the better for it. The sunlight swirling around Shannon’s wedding dress wouldn’t have been as perfect and pearly if it wasn’t threading through cool ribbons of rain vapor still floating around in the warm air.

Some people are walking, riding their bikes, some are shopping, they want things to be like they used to be. Others are sick, in their little apartments, looking out their windows, unsure, wary to breathe. There’s room today for them all. A lot of people are convinced otherwise. Convictions are so noble yet so small. I don’t know how that is, but I hear the screeching of the self-righteous and I know it is somehow.

Eighteen years isn’t very long. The world has been collapsing that whole time. That’s as true as anything, and it’s also a lie. The grass scratches my legs again. I glance at Shannon and she’s looking thoughtfully at the sky. She’s making meaning out of the clouds.