Whether the Weather be Good...

When I was a kid, our family went camping once at Mesa Verde. We attended the ranger campfire program and learned this little campfire song which my mom still sings to this day:

Whether the weather be good,
Whether the weather be not,
Whether the weather be cold,
Whether the weather be hot,
Whatever the weather, we'll weather the weather
Whether we like it or not.

Do not ask me why I remember that song. It's random. Very random.

The other night, though, I was so grateful for a little weather tender mercy. Kendall and I planned to go on a walk on the National Mall one evening. He had worked late and I had been reading all day with a lengthy, boring research methods class where the professor simply went around the room to each of the seven students and hashed out their dissertation topics (except when he got to me he announced he was sick and closed the class). At any rate, we both needed a walk. The weather called for torrential downpours and thunderstorms, 100% chance, right at the time we planned on going. While there's something fun sometimes about being caught in a rainstorm, it's not necessarily true when you're tired and just need some fresh air.

Well, as luck or tender mercy would have it, the rain didn't come until much later. It was a great night--warm (like 63 degrees in February!), clean pre-rain air, and of course beautifully lit with the monuments. Nice. It was just the little break I needed, in a lot of different ways. And for the record, I CAN weather the weather. I think it takes rain to really appreciate dry.