Melissa Senate

Max, 4 year old son: "Mommy, I wish I were you so I could be the one who saw the rainbow."

It amazes me what he remembers. Last year he asked me if I'd ever seen a real rainbow, and I told him I had, and he looked at me so wistfully. For some reason tonight, after we read The Grouchy Ladybug and Ten Little Dinosaurs and played The Evil Plankton from Spongebob Squarepants (Max plays Plankton and I'm either Gary or Spongebob or Patrick), he said the above, about the rainbow, totally out of the blue.

And then I got wistful because it was a gazillion years ago. It was 1990, I was turning 25, got my first passport, and went to Ireland with my friends Lucia and Joyce, coworkers of mine from Harlequin Books. We flew to Dublin, went to pubs to flirt with cute Irish guys, and then rented a car to drive southwest to end up in Galway. I was the designated driver (the only one with a license) and while driving over the Dingle Peninsula, I saw a rainbow across the sky. I'd gone on that trip with a lot of questions about my life, about my long-term boyfriend at the time, about where I was living–and where I wanted to be. The usual quarter-something crisis. And when I saw that rainbow, I knew I couldn't go back to my old life as it was, not having seen something so glorious, something so amazing. I've had several life-changing moments since then, but that was one of the best. I do hope Max gets to see a rainbow when he needs to.

Guess I couldn't help reflecting this Memorial Day weekend!