Desmond Scaife: Clouds roll in, roll out, just like issues of everyday life

Desmond Scaife
Columnist
Published: April 16, 2008

The “congressional six-year-old” said to me, “those are stratus clouds!” I was not paying much attention to her at that time so I asked her to repeat what she said. She answered with some irritation, “those are stratus clouds!”

As I began to get “wild hog warm” all over like a “hot flash,” I calmed myself and thought that there was no reason for my hostility because I was not aware or smart enough to know what a stratus cloud was! Matter of fact, I didn’t remember what year I should have known. As a parent, a male parent, I just know that there are storm clouds, snow clouds, dark clouds, pretty clouds, scary clouds, clouds that keep you from mowing the grass, puffy clouds ... and clouds that let you know that God is watching you!

A cloud is a peaceful presence of natural wonder. Some clouds are big and some are small. Some clouds make you wonder what’s up there and some make you not want to know what’s up there. I think clouds give us a sort of whip cream that tops off each good day. There are some clouds that remind us of how powerful creation is and some that show us how unappreciative or insensitive we are when we don’t recognize lessons of nature in personal lives.

I recently read a brief article written by former Auburn football player, Rob Shuler, on Siran Stacy. Stacy was the Alabama football player who lost his wife and four of his five children in a tragic car accident in November of 2007. In the article, he writes about how differences don’t really matter when we are connected by our commonly natural makeup and concerns. As “male wild hogger,” we very rarely speak about feelings, emotions, care, loss, and love but one can imagine and empathize with this situation in trying to be a support person or encourager to someone who has lost a family ... so we look up to the clouds!

Everyday life brings a wave of natural circumstances and situations that may seem unique to us but they do occur to others. So many families are adjusting to devastating circumstances that came out of nowhere, with no control, and no idea that today would be so different from yesterday.

The price of food has jumped and retail sales are down, way down. Even the young folk have parked the big rimmed cars. And crime is up. There is a wave of hostility and confrontation in some job and public places. I believe how we handle these circumstances determines who we are and whether we take the time to appreciate the clouds. I was taught that character and appreciation goes a long way.

I have a very dear friend who calls me at times and ask, “Do you see the clouds today? ... Look at the clouds and see how beautiful and shapely they are!” The friend never knows what kind of mood that I am in, doesn’t know if I am having a bad day or not, wasn’t there when a circumstance developed, but always calls at the right time to remind me to look at the clouds. The clouds remind me that it ain’t all that bad ... there is a whole lot more good to this life of ours than we want to admit! We just need to look for it and look at it! So, I asked the “little atmospheric pressure point” with my engaging conversational father of love tone, “What is a stratus cloud?” And she replied as she pointed to the sky, “Those up there!”

Desmond Scaife lives in Auburn and writes a column for the Opelika-Auburn News.