A month ago, a day before the first rains of the season, workers covered the perennially unfinished luxury condos across the with a vast blue tarp. Watching them attach it I groaned, anticipating its loud flapping and chaotic energy. I hated it.
Then my mom visited. She pointed it out and said, “I think that’s the biggest tarp I’ve ever seen.” I started to feel a little proud.
Gradually I came to acknowledge that it’s actually, alas, beautiful. These days, I look forward to windy Saturday afternoons when I can sit on my couch with a cup of hot herbal tea and enjoy its magnificent billowing.
Yesterday, on the way home from the kid’s preschool, I walked beneath it. I suddenly recognized it as a giant, trapped wave, tall as Nazaré and in its way just as strange.
