Two Rainbows

Two Rainbows

(A time for silence and a time for speech, Ecclesiastes 3, 7)

Last weekend I celebrated my 80^th birthday with my family.  Linda, my younger daughter, gave me a special present which she had made for me: an academic year diary with a different family photograph for each week. On the inside front cover is this one of the Waverley, the popular old Clyde paddle steamer.  Linda knew that this picture would remind me of a memorable trip which still makes me laugh.

The five of us: Bob and I with Sally (9), Linda (7) and Michael (2) set off from Ayr one blustery July day, bound for Millport on the island of Cumbrae.  No sooner had the Waverley left Ayr harbour than it began to roll from side to side, waves splashing up on to the deck.  Hastily we found seats and sat tight, trying to convince ourselves that we didn’t feel sick.


Our aim was to cycle right round the island, on hired bicycles.  Relieved to have made it safely to Millport, we headed straight for the cycle hire shop. Bob found a large bike with a seat on the back for Michael, then we selected three others of different sizes.  Linda’s was little more than a fairy cycle.


Off we set, happily pedalling out of the little town and round the first bend, looking across to the mainland.  Well, I at least was pedalling happily!  Suddenly Linda stopped and began to sob. “This bike’s too wee for me,” she wailed. “My legs are sore!  I’m having to pedal too fast!”  Not wanting to have to go all the way back to the shop, I quickly thought up a Ruse.


“Listen, girls.  I know what we can do. Sally, you get on to Linda’s bike – but just for five minutes.  Then every five minutes the two of you will change over, and if you can do that without crying all the way round the island, I’ll buy you each a big box of Maltesers when we get back to Millport.”  (Bribery and corruption, I know – but it worked!) 


A few minutes later we felt large spots of rain.  Soon these developed into a serious shower, so we were glad to reach a building where we could take shelter - the University Marine Biology Station.  Having parked our bikes outside, we gratefully went in.  Just inside was a splendid model of the Firth of Clyde, showing where the deepest areas are.  While I stopped to study that, Bob took Michael and the girls to look at the aquarium, which housed specimens of the Clyde’s sea-creatures.  Suddenly Michael let out a scream of terror, having just caught sight of a large lobster which seemed about to scrabble out of its glass case towards him!  Embarrassed, we quickly took him, still howling, to the exit, and clambered back on to our wet bicycles.  We pedalled along in miserable silence, Michael now falling asleep and tilting at an alarming angle towards the edge of his little seat behind Bob.


All at once I felt that the rain was easing off and looked up to the sky. 

“Ooh, look!  I can see a rainbow!” I exclaimed.  “OH, BE QUIET!” came the joint chorus from my dear family. (Not their usual way of addressing me, I hasten to add – but wet clothes plus sore legs seemed to add up to bad manners!)


Ever since that day I have been teased with the words “I can see a rainbow!” whenever I sound like an Exasperating Optimist while other family members are feeling completely fed up!

               And now for something completely different – but still featuring a combination of “BE QUIET!” and a Rainbow…

Eleven years after the trip to Millport our family circumstances had changed dramatically.  Bob had cancer of the bladder; his mother, now a widow and suffering from Parkinson’s disease, had come to live with us; Sally was at Edinburgh University, Linda at the Glasgow College of Building and Printing; I now had a fulltime teaching job at the secondary school where Michael was a pupil.


Every three months poor Bob had to suffer another unpleasant operation to have more cancer cells scraped from his bladder.  His mother, who tended towards depression, needed a lot of support, both physical and mental.  Every day I struggled to cope with all I had to attend to, trying all the while to appear cheerful, positive and supportive.  It was a huge challenge, and I found myself relying more and more on God for help.  I prayed every day at home, at work, in the supermarket, in short, wherever I was when I felt that I needed more strength and courage.  And, thanks be to God, I did get help – sometimes a quiet sense of calm would suddenly descend upon me, at other times I would have a “coincidental” meeting with someone who could give me the needed practical assistance or spiritual comfort.  My regular Sunday visit to church (without Bob, who was a complicated mixture of Sceptic and Seeker!)  provided more sources of strength – sometimes the sermon, but also an inspiring hymn, or a conversation with a sympathetic friend.  Writing also helped.  Expressing my intense emotions in my secret diaries got them “off my chest” so that I could better face the new challenges of the following day.


However, things came to a head one evening.  My mother-in-law had been admitted to hospital the previous week.  Bob, who after the latest operation was still passing blood and tissue, had just been told that she was terminally ill.  Her surgeon had asked him for permission to stop her medication and thereby “let Nature take its course”.  What an awful decision to have to make!


A neighbour had recently brought Bob a bottle of whisky by way of thanks for help in summarising a text.  Not surprisingly, the combination of whisky and his medication had a violent effect, opening the floodgates of despair, pain – both physical and mental – fear of death, anxiety for me and the children, and finally RAGE at me for being “a stupid optimist”, with his usual taunts of “All things bright and beautiful – oh yeah?” and swingeing attacks on my faith.


(Now I quote from my diary) ‘How ironical to know that without my faith, not only I but also Bob would be well and truly sunk in hopeless depression – as he himself has often admitted.  But what could I do but just sit there and take it?  Another case of ‘BE QUIET!’  Knowing only too well all that Bob is going through, it would have been presumptuous of me to say anything at all.’


Deeply shaken by this sudden verbal attack and by my inability to heal Bob’s pain, I prayed urgently for help.  A few days later, after a short time of quiet in an empty room, I wrote: ‘Gradually relaxing, I let my consciousness rise up and up, at the same time beseeching God to send me a comforting vision to help and strengthen me.  And He did!


I “saw” the high road between Straiton and Dalmellington, where I had often taken Bob’s Mum on a Sunday car run, stopping to hear the skylarks or to watch a shepherd and his collie round up the free-roaming sheep.  But what I now “saw,” and was aware of most clearly, was the weather – very dark clouds contrasting absolutely with the brilliant April sunshine.  And down to the spot where I was standing there came a beautiful rainbow.  Oh, how wonderful to be right in the very middle of the glorious seven-coloured light!  The arc connected me with Heaven, and I knew that I was being blessed, but also that the arc connected me with another spot on God’s earth, and that I was, as it were, to travel up the rainbow to God for strength, then down again on the other side, to bring the wonderful light, colours and blessing to somebody else who was standing alone in the dark clouds.  All were ONE by means of the rainbow: God, myself, and the other person.  I remembered the idea that at the end of the rainbow there is meant to be a pot of gold, and I “knew” that I, standing there, had enough gold (of faith and blessing) to last me a long, long time.  I felt joyful and richly blessed.


A day or so later there was a lovely coincidence when, in a National Trust shop, I found this picture postcard, which reproduces my vision almost exactly!  Joyfully I pasted it into my diary.

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