Misty

Inspirational song: This Is the Day (The The)

What a gorgeous day it was! It started out cloudy and cool. By the time my foster daughter and I drove to Boulder, the cloud deck was moving down the mountains. The first tiny specks of moisture hit her car windshield, not enough to turn on the wipers, but enough to fog up the windows and make us turn on the defroster. By the time we got home, the air was heavy and wet, and the temperatures were starting to fall. The man and I went out to a movie, and behold, My Day (tm) had arrived! The fine mist lingered for the rest of the day. I was still able to go out in just a light cardigan and a pashmina, but I shivered to and from the car. On the way home, I suggested a detour to the grocery store, to get milk for hot chocolate, which I made from scratch on the stovetop as soon as I got home, complete with a dash of cinnamon and homemade vanilla. And I spent most of the evening with a microfiber plush throw blanket around my shoulders. If we had purchased a house with a fireplace (I'm still apologizing over messing that one up), we would have started a fire tonight. Best day of the year.

I don't know why I associate my love of this first cold, sloppy wet day of the fall with two specific days in my youth, but I clearly do. For the first, I was in seventh grade. By this point in my life, my grandparents had swapped houses with my parents, after my mom remarried, so that the four of us could live in the bigger house, and my grandparents could downsize into the two bedroom home my mom had bought when we moved back to town. The middle school was halfway between the two houses, less than a two block walk from each. It was the week of my birthday, or maybe even the day of. I was going from school to lunch with my grandmother, the way I did daily until her cancer got to be too much for her to cook for us all. I was dressed up in glorious 1979 fashion, with an ecru suit (slacks, vest, and blazer) that I had gotten over the summer when back to school shopping with my stepmother. I felt on top of my game that day. It was cloudy and barely spitting rain, and I remember smiling, thinking that the weather had gifted me with the perfect day specifically for my birthday. I can't remember much past walking south from the school building, past the tennis courts, but I remember being in that spot, having that thought. It was a very happy moment.

The second day I remember every year when The Day rolls around was my freshman year at CU, in early or mid September. I had a Denver native roommate for the first few weeks of that semester, until her friends decided they didn't like the roommate they had. (They later figured we were both from Oklahoma, me and the other girl, and conned me into thinking okay, we probably have something in common, so we can switch. But that's a whole other story.) I had gone to Denver with roommate one, and met her mother. It was a day exactly like this: cold, drizzly, sloppy, smelling of wood smoke, and evoking the threat of snow, even though it was far too warm to produce actual frozen precipitation. It was my first experience living in Colorado, and the first time I'd lived someplace that got really cold since I was in Idaho in fourth grade. I was very excited for the prospect of snow, and that day of a wet commute to Denver and warm beverages in Julie's fancy Denver home stuck with me for the remainder of my life (to date).

A quick note about the present day: ever since I saw the first trailer online, I've been desperate to see this latest remake of A Star Is Born. That's where we went today. Holy moly it was good. The story is old, but the telling of it was poignant and I loved every second of it, even the moments when I was glad I happened to be twisting napkins in my hands (I got buttered popcorn, so naturally...). It made it much easier to discreetly pretend that my eyes weren't more than a little misty. I predict the soundtrack will sell like those attached to movies I loved so much when I was young.

(I can't find my phone, to attach the picture I took leaving the movie theater. Crap. It's probably in the car, and I don't want to go out in the cold in my jammies to retrieve it.)