“Why are there so many songs about rainbows, and what’s on the other side?”
Whenever I see a rainbow – or even the hint of a rainbow as seen in the sky here – I think of this song, and my heart feels a little fuller. Fuller from happiness, fuller from hope, and fuller, yes, from a tinge of sadness. It happened as I was making a few errands last week. Picking up some items for the twins and our next adventure, I was pulling into a parking lot (the sky is always best seen from a parking lot) when I spied this little rainbow peeking through the clouds. The day had been wild with storms and uncertainty, the kind of atmospheric mayhem that summer sometimes unleashes after days of heat and humidity. An unsettled atmosphere always unsettles the heart, and the rainbow has traditionally been portrayed as the balm at the end of it all.
It reminds me of an August day on which I was traveling the New York State Thruway in the year of the Royal Rainbow World Tour – 1997. I finished up the last few stops and sailed along as a magnificent rainbow took the remaining rain and clouds and produced a visage of beauty. It spanned the horizon in front of me, stunning in its breadth and intensity, and I took it as an omen that I was exactly where I supposed to be. That doesn’t happen often in life, particularly in the life of what was then a newly-turned-22-year-old just barely embarking upon his life’s journey, but I felt it. That rainbow reached around and framed the vision of my future. I had no idea where I was going, but I throttled ahead without looking back, ever reaching for the rainbow that was elusively ahead of me that day, and every day since.
