The forecast was not for overcast but that didn’t seem to stop the clouds from coming in late yesterday afternoon. If this was “partly cloudy,” they must have meant only the part you could see. A great, gray dome stretched out in every direction with only a thin section of light just above the western horizon. Not quite what I expected to see when I walked out of Irvin Hall and across the parking lot.

Still, I’ve seen worse ways to end a day. Toward the east, the least bit of pink glazed the reflecting edges as deflected sunlight passed through the break of southwestern rim. The slightest tinge of rose caught the curds of the sky. Just before we reached Troy on our way home from Highland, I caught a full flush of color in the mirror.

The sun had just then slipped below the inverted bowl of the clouds. An orange glow burned sure and solid, firing the sky and flaming the tree-lined ridge into sudden silhouette. Cornfields caught the quick hue, turning pale tans into burnished tones. In less than two minutes, the glow was gone.

We come to the end of each day, remembering either the gray or the way a distant pine stood starkly against the fire of a dying sky. Neither is the total truth but one is clearly the better memory. While all that is passed is fixed and fastened, a selectively deliberate amnesia can be a very healing thing. And whenever we have a choice about a day, a friend or the ending of some shared journey, we ought to choose to rehearse the memory that makes for better instead of worse.

H. Arnett
11/04/09