The other day, just like every other weekday, I was driving the kids home from school. The two of them chatted and squabbled in the back seat, while I went through the motions of getting us home virtually on auto pilot. My mind was numb, my position immobile, and my view of course was the road ahead. "Wow!" one of the children cries out suddenly. "A rainbow!" I manage a quick skyward glance. "Oh wow!" I find myself join in. The rainbow is vivid- green, red and purple splashed across the sky. The sun is just peeking through a hole in the cloudy gray. It creates a surreal lighting effect; rain and sunshine dancing momentarily in tandem. The rainbow stretches from horizon to horizon. If leprechauns could see it at this moment, they would be convinced their pot of gold rested somewhere in the trailer park across the street. I have never seen a more complete and Technicolor rainbow. I’m still driving, but I want to stop and stare. I can’t keep my eyes from wandering back each time the traffic slows. I look around at the other drivers. Its once of those times when it seems like the boundaries between strangers will be blurred. I expect to see them grinning back at me, or staring up at the sky. I am surprised to find that no one else appears to have seen the rainbow at all. They are all placid behind their steering wheels, their expressionless faces staring blankly ahead. How can this be? How could they miss it? Later that evening, I express my disbelief at the inattentive other drivers to my husband. "What made you any different?" he asks. "Why did you see the rainbow?" I realize at once that the answer is both simple and prophetic. I had the rainbow spotters sitting in the back of my car! Not one of those other drivers in my immediate vicinity had children riding with them. I had the incredible good fortune to see that rainbow for only one reason. I had the kids.
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