Blue: Here for It, #332

Hi! It's R. Eric Thomas. From the internet?
Hi!

Today is the day that I look forward to every year. And almost every year, I forget about it until it's here. I think the reason is I never know when it's coming, or even if it's coming at all. And then, suddenly: it's today. I've lived all of my life on the East Coast and I don't know if this kind of a day happens everywhere else, but I hope it does, in one form or another. I hope today is today where you are.

It's a day when the sky is almost unimaginably clear and blue, as if the idea of clouds didn't exist. And the sun is so bright and so warm, but there's a breeze that keeps it from being hot or humid. It's crisp but comfortable. The air is clean, like fresh water, like it's been scrubbed clean. Everything feels brighter; everything is brighter. And, to me, it makes everything feel possible.

It's hard to describe, I think, because it just sounds like a nice day if you're not in it. But there's something extraordinary about it. To me, it's the time of year and the temperature and the way that, by this time, we're moving out of summer's indulgences and into the rhythms of fall. But it's a kind of day that says "Not yet. Be here. Be present. Begin." My schedule is, by design, chaotic and unbowed to the tyranny of reality. As such, fall doesn't really bring about the kind of return to schedules or routines that it does for a lot of people. But when I wake up and discover that it's this day, I feel like I'm getting an invitation to reset, to make new intentions, to fill my tank up again, to sit in the sun and drink it up a little bit more.

When I see the cloudless cerulean sky and the bright ball of sunlight and feel the warm breeze, I always--I suppose unfortunately–think of it as 9/11 weather because the first time I distinctly remember being awed by this day was that day, on my way to math class at 8:30 in the morning in Manhattan. For years, I felt weird thinking of such a gorgeous day as 9/11 weather, but that's the only thing that sticks in my mind. And while that day became unimaginably awful and the days and weeks after it became nightmarish, nationally and personally, when I encounter that weather again, I just remember hope. On the personal side, by the end of that semester, I would have lost my last living grandparent, spiraled into depression, and dropped out of Columbia, and all those memories exist at the periphery of the cloudless blue sky for me. But the warmth that envelops me is the hope I felt starting my junior year, and the pride I felt for actually getting up for an 8:30 am math class on a Tuesday, and the determination I had that I would actually go to the class regularly and learn the material even though it was absolutely beyond my skillset.

What I hoped for didn't come to pass, but the day came back the next year on a different date and I got to feel hope again. It keeps coming back and I keep meeting it at different places in my life, in different places on the East Coast. And with different but no less fervent hope.

Nearly 20 years later, I'd discover that the weather actually has a name. I was listening to the audiobook The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett M. Graff and he devotes a chunk of an early chapter to talking about stunning the day was.

The storm of September 10th that swept across the Northeast, marking the passage of a strong cold front, preceded a high-pressure system of dry Canadian air that gave rise to a unique--and memorable--meteorological phenomenon known as a "severe clear," cloudless skies that made an enduring impression on all who would witness what transpired in the hours ahead.

He then includes a minute to soundbites of various interviewees, from Katie Couric to Tom Daschle to Joyce Dunn, a teacher from Shanksville, PA, describing the sky.

extraordinarily blue

gorgeous blue

so blue

deep blue

deep, deep blue

cobalt blue

cerulean blue

the bluest of blues

One of those days that you wish you could put in a bottle.

It's funny how words fail to capture something so arresting but, in their failure, cumulatively, they give shape to the ineffable. It is simply so, so blue.

I was shocked when I heard that there was a name for it--severe clear--and that the day's gorgeousness stood out to so many other people because it's not something I'd ever talked about with anyone else. And sometimes, all evidence to the contrary, you think that the weather is only happening to you.

But ever since I listened to the book in 2019, I talk about it with everybody. I say "today is the day" I say "look at the sky" I say "it's so so blue and anything is possible."

My ex’s new girlfriend forbids him from speaking to me and I’m having a hard time accepting it (NJ.com link)

Foster parent wants to be done with the drama (Anchorage Daily News link)

Friend’s treatment of ailing cat is hard to take (Washington Post link)

Weddings Reflect Values of All Sorts (Boomer Magazine link)

I didn’t help someone when I had the chance (AL.com link)

There’s a labor imbalance in my marriage and my husband accused me of only making dinner (Lonestar Live link)

My father-in-law’s new partner is making visits insufferable (MassLive link)

My past drug use led to someone else going to prison. Should I come clean? (Cleveland.com link)

"today is the day",
Eric