“‘But,’ said his father, stopping in front of the drawing-room window, ‘it won’t be fine.’”
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
The day to begin the tile repair arrived… and so did the thunder, lightening, a downpour, and three tornado emergency alerts.
Since the fateful discovery on June 23rd that a failed hot water heater flooded an entire house at the ranch, a deluge of wet weather, insurance negotiations, and unexpected turns in life have slowed the repairs.
Like my drive on I-10 in Friday afternoon traffic, reconstruction has been a start and stop plod.
Readers of the post A Flood of Tears, But Not for a Flood learned of my rain curse — striking when I make plans. Planning this repair job may be the biggest rainmaker yet.
At the time of the flood, San Antonio was under stage 2 drought restrictions, the grass was short, crunchy, and brown,
and our lake level was 5 feet below the spillway — a summer eyesore Texas tank owners know well.
Since then, all drought restrictions are lifted, San Antonio had its rainiest September in recorded history, the grasses are green and tall with seed heads popping,
and the lake is full to the grassy edges with water flowing over the spillway —
ah the sound of cascading waters.
It is a confused time (in more ways than the weather) —
spring flowers are blooming among fall grasses,
trees are turning out new growth rather than dressing in autumn colors,
and last weekend, I watched an endangered golden-cheeked warbler foraging in the juniper and oaks, more than two months beyond the time they typically migrate to wintering grounds in Mexico and Central America.
My contractors have rescheduled and re-shifted the order of trade work too many times to count.
As the week approached to reinstall tile in our bedroom shower, I asked the tile installers to come to Comfort no matter the forecast.
And so, amid the threat of a tornado, the tile setting began.
The view from our bedroom is one of the best on the property — when you look through the glass door to the porch, your eye glances over the sedum patch to across a hilltop meadow and over our deepest gorge to the ridge on the other side which stretches in a horizontal mimic of the Texas hills beyond until it reaches the horizon, the stage floor to an ever changing sky show above.
This day featured multiple showings.
From front row seating, the two brothers installing the shower, Gustavo and Rigo (experts in tile, work ethic, and being nice), watched the weather with caution.
Within the first hour of work, three tornado alarms sounded over the cell phone, adding drama to the dramatic clouds swirling above in shades of dark and light and shapes of ominous foreshadowing.
Sure enough, the storm came, and we scrambled to bring the tile inside for sealing.
While the downpour was fleeting and the tornado never realized, the theater in the sky continued.
Stripes of gray and white clouds rippled across the skyline and reflected in the puddles left behind by the storm.
A single ribbon of blue teased of a clearing.
A cast of orange made an appearance, and for a moment we watched with a new caution — encouraged yet unconvinced the sky would sit calm.
Suspended below, in the crags of the gorge, a silent valley fog was the more faithful hint of the weather to come.
Like dry ice rolling out of a kettle at Halloween, the fog rose and rolled out of the gorge, layers of white folding over and over, creeping across the hilltop.
And crawling with it a ghost-grey veil of mist masked everything.
Minutes before, we were marveling at the show in the sky, and now the sky had disappeared,
leaving a curtain of white for shadowy actors to take a front-of-curtain bow.
For the next hour the view from the bedroom was white, a blank canvas from which to work.
Inside, I joined Gustavo in applying sealer to each tile while Rigo continued preparing the shower walls.
We poured and rolled out sealer and waited until it soaked into the limestone and then poured and rolled out more sealer until it saturated the stone.
We laid out each tile to dry and then the process started over — a task that in the end took two days to complete all 225 square feet.
While we worked, we talked.
And like a painter with a brush and palette before a ready canvas, from nothing sprung sweeps of colors from conversations, stories shared, and viewpoints exchanged.
From nothing, friendship filled the space as an artist brightens the world with a creation that connects.
Outside, the Creator was painting too, again, as the white canvas exploded with color.
Loud.
The change screamed it was so sudden and so opposite of the weather the hour before.
Blue sky so intense and clear that only the witnesses would believe the earlier storm — all in a day.
But faith needs not witnesses.
Listen.
That evening I drove around the property, and it was if the sky was still speaking, signaling that I hear the stir in my spirit from many colors or none at all, all in a day.
Can talk of weather evoke as the work of an artist?
Perhaps the changing backdrop is life — patterns of the world against which we must clear our mind and find our way.
I went to sleep restless.
The rain returned, pounding on the metal roof through the night.
And as if to prove a point, the day awoke under a blanket of water lying on the grass in strings of beads —
lovely, like frost on a snowy morning, except the temperature was 70 degrees.
I stopped and watched.
Through the woods the hue was white,
but within each water droplet the light reflected colors.
The rising sun across the glistening grass was a megaphone, shouting at me to walk among the millions of droplets across the ranch filled with colors disguised in white.
I heard.
While walking, a pop of purple caught my eye —
a morning glory,
a flower that blooms in the sunlight hours and withers before dusk, all in a day.
And every petal was painted with drops of water.
“‘Yes, of course, if it’s fine tomorrow,” said Mrs. Ramsay.”
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse