In the Cafe: Gray

This day could not be more gray. Even the purple fence opposite E’s school and the orange roof of the gas station across from the café where I write this are muted, grayed. The sky is the color of the pavement, and the foggy almost-rain merges them. It’s probably a coincidence that four gray cars are parked across the street and two more just drove by, but a light green Subaru and pale brown sedan register as their own variations on gray.

Life goes on. On one side of me a nervously vivacious college student is trying to engage the laconic boy across from her (I want to tell her to stop: when a guy really does like her, she won’t have to work so hard) (or it could be that he’s her ex, and she’s trying to pretend everything’s ok). On the other side a man is carrying on an active relationship with his Blackberry. At E’s school, the kids are planning a coup: they are going to trap their teachers and then sneak into the bunker, a big closet at the end of their classroom which they are convinced is full of toys (I believe it actually holds Costco-sized boxes of Cheerios and stacks of posterboard). Chinese New Year is everywhere, and sometimes the red manages to pierce the gray, visually at least.

Winter is supposed to be roiling storms followed by white snow under sunny blue skies. Bright-colored parkas and hats and mittens. M’s parka is orange and my hat is purple. But I haven’t had to wear my hat lately, or even my parka (dark green). Every day I wear my gray fleece. Rain substitutes, badly, for snow.

It’s like the winter we lived in London, when one day I looked at my kids and realized their skin had turned that translucent British white. Suddenly I understood the popularity of ₤89 package tours to the Canary Islands.

I exaggerate. On Saturday the sun shone like early spring and, sure enough, there was a spring in everyone’s step. I wore my sunglasses.

By Sunday it was gray again, and the girls and I climbed on gray rocks by gray sand and a gray ocean. It poured rain as we drove home.