Blue Sky, The Piano Teacher, and The Kid Gets a Raise

It is hard, sometimes, to remember just how blue skies can be when you are hunkered down in the midst of a storm. But the skies bloom blue today, and I have no major meal to prepare, and so I have been reading The Piano Teacher, a book that, if at times feels rushed (surprising grammatical miscues, dialogue pitching toward explication, secondary characters that do not always find dimension), has much to teach about life in Hong Kong during World War II and is often punched through with vivid hues—sunflower yellow, rose red, jade, emerald.

Late yesterday afternoon, while the rain kept on, my son came home from the theater where he works whenever he is at home from school.

"How was your day?" we wanted to know.

"Not bad at all," he said. Sherlock Holmes had sold out, It's Complicated, too, and beyond all that, his boss had taken him aside for a performance review—a meeting that concluded with the awarding of a substantial raise.

"Did you even know you were up for review?" I asked.

"I wasn't even thinking about getting reviewed," he said.

"So you got called into an office, and there it was—this really great news?"

"That's the way it worked," he said.

I like stories like this one—moments that are unanticipated and rich at the same time.