Creeping Phlox and Monsoon Umbrellas

Each spring, the creeping phlox curls around the rock at the base of the mailbox.  Lavender-colored, star-shaped flowers and delicate leaves brighten up the pale grey stone that has lain bare all winter.  The flowers draping around the rock comfort and please me—and, surprisingly, they remind me being a child opening up an umbrella at the start of the monsoon season in India. 

In India, the monsoons also bring the start of the school year in June.  Back when I was in elementary school, every year, my parents bought me new rubber sandals required for my uniform. Some years—to my delight—I also needed a new umbrella and a new raincoat.  Unlike the sandals, these did not have to match the school uniform.  I remember one umbrella, pale blue like a faded bird’s egg, with a brown print of leaves and flowers around its edge.  It had a brown plastic handle, and it was full sized, not the small, kids’ size I had had before.  When I would open the blue umbrella, I would create a temporary haven from the rain. 

Not that the rain bothered me.  I loved the monsoons: the relief from the heat of summer, the inviting puddles in the brilliant green grass, the smell of the wet earth, and the blanket of grey sky, a charming change from the incessant sunlight.  I also loved the start of school; I would inhale the new notebooks, savor the sharp edges of the eraser that had not yet been used, and delight in the novelty of overhead lights in classrooms on especially dark days.  The monsoons also brought the potential for drama: heavy downpours, potential flooding, and the need to huddle under umbrellas. 

To find relief from my predictable young life, I imagined those umbrellas were temporary shelters, mobile homes I carried with me.   I would pretend that I had to remain within the borders of the umbrella, my footsteps not straying outside.  And sometimes, I would set up the umbrella on the back verandah and pretend I was a vendor squatting on a sidewalk selling paan, a betel leaf chew.  Even then, I think I knew that the life of a street vendor was difficult, not glamorous.  But I couldn’t resist creating that temporary shelter, that little home in the circle of the umbrella. 

Now, seeing the phlox curl around the stone by the mailbox, I recall the circle of that temporary childhood home.