Unfortunately, I found myself the other day in extreme pain. It’s a long story, and I won’t bore you with the details (teeth-related, ugh). I’m much better now.

Earlier in the day though, I was whimpering and crying on public transportation on the way home. I had managed to watch some of the Germany-Brazil game in fits and starts between dozing and cold compresses… and I wondered if I was hallucinating when I woke up to see Germany with five goals. A line of storms rolled in during the dinner hour, and my power flickered on and off… the lights went completely dark at one point but came back on… I could hear the emergency generator in the parking lot singing to life. I dug through my closet and found my emergency lantern and some batteries, and curled back up on the couch like a pill bug. It’s amazing how your perception changes when you’re dealing with base level pain– how you ignore some things entirely (I never once looked out the window to see if it was really storming)– or your anxiety heightens (I was terrified a downed tree would knock out power and then I’d be in the dark, too).

At some point, I realized that I needed to make the trek to the pharmacy. Not only had it stopped raining, but a huge double rainbow filled the sky over my building (you could see the ends, tip-to-tip), but I couldn’t get a full shot with my phone. “It’s not everyday a rainbow is over your house,” a neighbor said, snapping many photos from the median. As we drove further into town, we stopped once with no one behind us on the road to get another shot. A parking lot near an industrial strip mall held a cluster of tough looking men in grubby work clothes and boots, pointing their phones at the sky. When we got to our destination, I managed to snap the below. If I wasn’t in such discomfort, I would have gotten the reverse shot too–  half a dozen pharmacy employees outside snapping pictures of the double rainbow. “Who’s minding the store?” one of them laughed. I remember thinking the answer didn’t matter.

I wasn’t inside more than 10 minutes… when I walked back out the car, it had vanished completely. It was a fleeting moment of joy during a very scary day, and I took comfort in the fact that so many others put their evenings on pause to look up and share this beauty with others.

Double rainbow from July 8, 2014.