The air went still in anticipation of the next phase of the storm.
We rushed to close the windows, but misjudged the direction of the wind. The side we attended to last was already drenched by what I would consider a tropical rain. An opaque wall of water was separating now the pine trees swaying their branches mere several feet away from the window.
The rain started at 11 o'clock. Eleven minutes later, having turned meadows into the streams of green and brown it was gone. At 11:22 a.m., another sign of the tropics presented itself.
A rosebush in front of the house took a month of rest after filling my summer with the beauty of colour and fragrance. It was a nature's first sign of autumn, and the maple trees assumed the responsibility of adding the vibrancy of red to my morning sun salutations. And the leaves were doing just fine, until last week the rose decided that the autumnal firework cannot be missed and blushed with nearly a dozen of blooms. One of those flowers, being a gift in its own, attracted what I consider a little miracle: A hummingbird.
An unusual movement outside caught my attention, and was I awed by a sight of a hummingbird. I only have witnessed their flight twice in my life, in the mountains on the border of California and Nevada, and in Curacao. But a hummingbird in New Jersey? I read later that those birds have been occasionally spotted in New Jersey, and that the first record is dated early '90s, and there are zero records prior to that.
A possibility of miracles becomes more and more real with each day, I knew as my thoughts were conforming to the feelings. A sense of expansion, of experiences beyond the known boundaries embraced my being. And in harmony with that feeling the blue sky picked through the thick gray cover of clouds, and the golden light changed the world into a place where every person I met smiled, asking, "Where did that sun come from?"
After the storm, 09-29-2011, above the Whole Foods Market, Princeton, NJ
