It’s time for me to tell you about the end-of-2020 experience that sent me into this New Year with real hopes for something much better to come…

It was an ordinary day, early in the week preceding Jan. 1. I had just finished running many errands before driving back to my condo development. Outside our locked mailroom, a USPS vehicle was parked in front of the entrance stairway, so I decided to stay in my car until all its box deliveries had been completed. 

Rain had fallen sporadically throughout the day, but that moment was a briefly dry one, and the sun was shining — not briskly, but bravely — as I looked out my window at a very blue sky. And in those often-used words of the days before Christmas: “What to my wondering eyes should appear?” but a full-blown, beautiful rainbow, forming an overall arc in muted, pleasantly pastel colors!

When did you last see a rainbow? For me, it was such a long time ago, I’d almost forgotten how heart-stopping this appearance can be! My mind tuned in immediately to Judy Garland singing “Somewhere over the Rainbow” in “The Wizard of Oz,” and for my first time ever, this old vision quickly became a real eye-opener, set to a muted accompaniment played for me alone.

Then, almost as quickly, I thought of Noah, carrying in his Ark the future of all life on earth, just as demanded by our God of Everything. Noah had been tasked with the most difficult human assignment yet, and I was wondering if he himself even knew that his command was actually the second issued in our Bible, the one designed to give our world another chance, after Adam and Eve couldn’t make themselves resist temptation and follow the order they had first been charged with…

The rainbow hadn’t yet faded as the postal van finally moved forward and I was able to pull up to the stairs myself. Once inside the room, I filled the bag I always carry when I pick up my mail — there is frequently so much of it, most of which I could certainly do without, but despite the inviting trash barrel left so conveniently there, I take it all home and inspect each piece, just to be sure I’m not missing anything…

However, so sadly, by the time I left the mailroom, my rainbow vision had disappeared — gone altogether during my short absence from keeping an eye on it. However, the rain itself had not resumed, the sky retained its blue radiance, and for one brief and oh-so-hopeful moment I felt that maybe my wish, and everyone else’s across the globe — for 2021 to be much better than its predecessor — might really come true.

But I no longer saw any trace at all of that beautiful bow; neither did I see any scouting birds winging their ways back to the Ark with green leaves in their beaks to prove that — yes, indeed — the world itself had survived the cleansing flood, and was ready to be repopulated with all the life that God and Noah had selected to fill it again.

Once, long ago, an old friend wrote a poem about people who had what he called “clear sight” rather than “ordinary vision”: He said folks with it see what most others don’t because they keep their eyes open for those beautiful but too-brief moments so easily missed. I had never really thought about that sort of definition before, but it came back to me with rainbow clarity, inspired by the disappearance of my own personal vision…

Harriet Gross can be reached at harrietgross@sbcglobal.net.