sudden changes

This morning, on my way to work, I drove past a full blooming cherry blossom tree.  As I drove past the tree, a sudden flurry of white flowed toward my windshield.  I assumed it was a delightful morning spritz of cherry blossoms, but, as it turns out, it was a strange dark snow storm flattening out my spring morning.  As I drove closer and closer to work I passed through the curtains of grey moisture, watching, with each successive glance, the blue April sky thinning and disappearing into November.

Sudden changes happen.  Your flip flop breaks and you are left awkwardly shoeless.  You feel sick and must quickly excuse yourself, leaving people glancing and wondering in your wake if you are alright.  You discover your landlord hasn't been paying the bank by an eviction notice on your door.  There is little we can say or do to return our lives to the trajectory we were on before the change.  Before your car smashed into the car in front of you or before you learned that bit of information that changed everything.

The good news is that, as intelligent beings, we have a developed phrase to help us cope with these sudden changes.  Well, that's life.  We say those words the same way we say, "That's technology," when our fancy smart phone insists that we are touching the screen when, in fact, we are not. Or like we say, "That's Aunt Janice," after receiving yet another ridiculous pair of birthday socks whose destiny, like all the others, is to be humored, and eventually, discarded.  This phrase allows us to resign ourselves to the greater forces: technology, Aunt Janice, and especially life, that rascal.

I remember a time I spotted, from a ways off, a dense storm cloud dropping heavy rain ahead of me in an expansive valley somewhere in the void between Colorado and Utah.  I distractedly drove through that valley keeping one eye on the baleful storm, anxiously anticipating the clashing of our two paths.  Just before the sun gave way to the pelting beads of rain, I was ready: wipers on, hands at ten and two.  I was  laughing as I hit the wall of heavy, pelting rain and hail like one laughs as the roller coast car drops over a precipice, delighted at the suddenness of it.  That's life.