a moment in the day: hail

At first the hail in the kitchen window looks like snow. It's so fine and white.

When I was in my twenties and early thirties, one of the games I played was that snow was good luck. I don't know how it started, but even though I liked to think of myself as someone who wasn't superstitious, I liked to pretend that when it snowed, it was an omen that good things were going to happen.

Metaphorically, hail feels sort of the opposite. At work on Friday the biggest topic of conversation in my little corner of the workspace was the coronavirus, and climate change in general, the symptoms of it, like pandemics and the wildfires that will soon be popping up again in our part of the country. Someone said "apocalypse." Someone said "pestilence" and mentioned the ten plagues of Egypt. Pestilence, flies, locusts. Fire and hail.

I go to the big window by the back door to get a better look. The hail cascades in a slant down the roof of Stephen's studio and showers off the side in a white beaded sheet.

These days, it seems there are so many things to worry about that I don't know which to worry about when. Sometimes they stack up and sit on my chest, sometimes my brain compartmentalizes them and closes them away and I sit at the computer for hours tinkering on some book cover design, focused.

All winter, when I hoped for snow and the closest thing I got was a couple showers of mostly hail, I pretended I don't play games anymore.

There's a rumble of thunder but the patter on the rooftop is slowing. Nicholas, who's been hiding in the bathroom, comes out and steps over, looking up at me. The sky is heavy and gray-white, but right in the middle, past the top of the studio, there's a patch of blue.