We drive.
My daughter’s in her car seat in the back as a little bit of rain hits the windshield. In the gray clouds I notice the faintest hint of a rainbow. “Look, there’s a rainbow.” I tell her.
“Where?” she asks. I point, but she keeps asking, “Where? Where?”
It’s fading so I try to point it out exactly, but she’s getting frustrated. I’m not sure if it’s the way the seat has her strapped in or the direction my finger is pointing has her looking some way different than I intend, but I start to get concerned this whole situation might be scarring. Three years old is a formative age for the subconscious. Could this create in her the idea that magic and beauty will always be just out of reach?
But then the road curves and something funny happens, the rainbow gets brighter. “Do you see it?” I ask her.
“A rainbow!”
We turn on to the interstate and I swear to God in the west is the fullest, most vivid rainbow I’d ever seen in my 38 years on Earth. Hell, for all I know it’s the most brilliant, colorful rainbow anyone in the universe has ever seen.
“Two rainbows!” she says. The conditions were so perfect that another fainter rainbow was on the outside of the legendary rainbow.
We keep driving. The road turns again.
“Where are the rainbows?” she asks. And I wonder if we can’t help scarring our young no matter how hard we try. Now she’ll think rainbows are something we’re all entitled to.
Starring Pablo Chiste 