Rainy days and Mondays always get me down. ∼The Carpenters (Song by Paul Williams and Roger Nichols)

Yes, I used to listen to the Carpenters. And I’ll bet now you’ve got this song stuck in your head, too. Sorry about that, but Monday was challenging, Tuesday not much better, and Wednesday it rained all day long, so this song did rather spring to mind.

Once we had dealt with every issue as far as possible yesterday, David suggested we go for a drive and see a bit more of Vermont while we had the chance. Grafton had been recommended to us, and it’s not far from here, but it was too rainy for photos and too early to eat. There was only one thing we could do–head north to Simon Pearce in Quechee, one of our favorite rainy-day places.

Warm fires in the basement (okay raging furnaces, but kind of cozy from a distance) . . .

. . . friendly glassblowers answering unlimited questions . . .

. . . gorgeous artistic housewares (glass, wood, pottery, textiles) in the shop . . .

. . . and last but not least, Vermont cheddar soup and other delights in the restaurant. Yum.

And on the way home . . . a random zebra sighting. I know. What?!?

Seriously. How cool is that? I made David turn around and drive back so I could get a photo.

The whole experience was certainly a nice change of pace, but more than that, the peaceful, meandering drive gave me a chance to think about how I deal with frustrations and challenges, especially when it’s only a rainy day. David used to tell the girls when they were growing up, “Choose your attitude.” And I remember how my attitude toward wind changed in France. So although I trust YOUR attitude is beyond reproach, I’m going to close with a favorite Buechner passage about loving rain. Loving rain. Imagine. But honestly, he’s almost got me convinced. (I recommend reading it slowly, like poetry, to feel the resonance. This man knows how to put words together.)

I loved the rain as a child. I loved the sound of it on
the leaves of trees and roofs and window panes and
umbrellas and the feel of it on my face and bare legs. I
loved the hiss of rubber tires on rainy streets and the
flip-flop of windshield wipers. . . . A rainy day was a special day for me in a sense that no other kind of day was—a day when the ordinariness of things was suspended with ragged skies drifting to the color of pearl and dark streets turning to dark rivers of reflected light and even people transformed somehow as the rain drew them closer by giving them something to think about together, to take common shelter from, to complain of and joke about in ways that made them more like friends than it seemed to me they were on ordinary sunny days. 

But more than anything, I think, I loved rain for the power it had to make indoors seem snugger and safer and a place to find refuge in . . . . I loved rain for making home seem home more deeply . . . ∼Frederick Buechner — A Sacred Journey

Anyone have a quote for Mondays?