Morning Thanks--Cerulean

With cheek and jaw stiff with Novocain, I figured I could spend that ugly frozen time outside yesterday, given that the weather was scandalously warm for what should be winter. 

The story of the pond I often circle on a walk is hardly worth your time. It's here, south of town, because of the highway overpass just beside it. If you want to see what was here before the water, the trucks just north of you are on it. God didn't create that little pond; some highway crew did.

And the tawny world around it is unremarkable right now too. It wears winter's garb, a bit of blush maybe, in the dead grasses, but nothing to light up a camera. 

For me at least, yesterday the South Pond was beautiful because the temps were, and because it was so much better to be outside than in. What I couldn't help but notice when I got there was that the water--the plain, old water--was royally gorgeous. 

My granddaughter's eyes are strikingly blue, as are her father's, and his mother's, and her father's before them all. My son says people often notice his daughter's eyes, remark about them, almost as if stunned. Throughout the population, less than ten percent of us are so blessed. Sorry, I can't help but think she's stunning too, even though blue eyes in our family are not at all foreign or rare.

My mind was stuck on the word cerulean, not because I knew exactly what it meant, but because I know people use it when they see the deep blue of a rich, prairie sky or what was coming up just then from the overpass pond. 

It's not a strange color. It's up-front primary, and sits between two other beauties--purple, the robes of royalty; and green, the treasured hope of early spring. Still somehow, blue is and forever will be associated with bleakness and blahs and feeling somehow bummed. "The Blues," a genre of music some consider the unique American gift to the arts, rise from the darkness of slavery and will forever carry at least some appreciative dolor. 

But yesterday, with stuck cheeks and lips, taking a hike around that cerulean gem seemed--and was--a blessing. At one season or another, Thoreau called Walden the eye of God. I get that.

I told you the story: the south pond is nothing more than what was left when a half-dozen diggers dug out good Iowa dirt that now lays beneath the overpass an eighth of a mile north, and less. Just last month, the whole southern edge of that little pond was a mess of yellowing lily pads. 

But yesterday, the mess was gone, and what was left was perfectly cerulean, a mirror of the endless heavens above. 

I sat down east beside the river for a while, then came back and circled the northern edge of the pond before returning to the truck, my mouth considerably unstuck by then, loosened up enough at least to smile.

The blue in that water--like the blue in my granddaughter's eyes--that's subject enough for this morning thanks.