The early afternoon sun was high overhead. The deep blue sky was the perfect backdrop to the puffy white clouds.
It was a perfect summer day—warm, but not hot—and the humidity of high summer had not yet arrived.
I was standing in the front yard when the beauty overhead caught my attention. I paused to watch—to see what the clouds wanted to become.
Even then, I was a watcher.
Shorts. No shoes. Grass underfoot, as usual. I lay down in the shade of Dad’s pink rosebush, the blades tickling the backs of my legs.
Above me, the clouds shifted and gathered themselves into shapes—a horse, a dog—then something else entirely.
They looked like fluffy white cotton. Or maybe cotton candy. I couldn’t decide which.
I was always a watcher. Sometimes it even got me into trouble—but not that day.
I wasn’t trying to make the clouds into anything. I was just watching to see what they would become.
I didn’t know then that I would spend much of my life doing the same thing with people.
Looking back, I think people are a little like clouds. They have a way of revealing themselves if we’re patient enough to watch.
