Evan and Clayton just got their first umbrellas this week. Evan was so excited, he had to bring his on a walk, even though it was nowhere near raining. Maybe there were a few puffy white clouds in the sky...maybe.
I remember being so proud of myself when I carried my own little umbrella as a child. It was navy blue and covered with little white whales. The same fabric lined the inside of my matching raincoat. When it was raining, I always had my umbrella in hand. When it was not, I did rain dances in the driveway with my sisters and brother.
When I was in my late twenties, I found that little umbrella shoved to the back of the closet in my old room at my parents' house. It was still in amazingly good condition and my current umbrella had just broken, so I started using my childhood one again. I took it back to Saint Louis with me, where I was attending graduate school. It rained quite a bit in Saint Louis and my umbrella got really good use. I loved that it was small enough to pop inside of my bag, though the handle would stick out the top.
Until one day, rain was in the forecast and I was on my way to campus with my umbrella tucked under my arm. Somehow it slipped out and I did not notice for a block or two. I was only a few very short blocks from my home, still within sight of my driveway, so I knew it could not be far. I turned back around and walked all the way back to my house. It was not there. I walked the few blocks again, looking into the gutter and over the sides of chain link fences, in case it had somehow gotten caught or had flown further than I thought. But it was gone. I can only imagine that someone watched me drop it and picked it right up for themselves because it could not have been on the ground more than a minute or two before I noticed it was missing. It made me so sad to think that someone could have taken my umbrella, the one I had had for twenty years, without calling over to the next block where I was walking.
Oh, that is a sad story...
But now I get to watch my son with his first umbrella and instead of remembering how mine was lost, I see myself at Evan's age, carrying my whales with such pride, just as my little one now carries his.
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