the heavens so far

I'll miss the afternoons when I'd go out on our lawn and throw my head back. The sky in Seattle is so low, it felt like God had lowered a silk parachute over us. 
Every feeling I ever knew was up in that sky. Twinkling joyous sunlight; airy, giggling cloud wisps; blinding columns of sun. 
Orbs of gold, pink, flesh, utterly cheesy in their luminosity. Gigantic puffy clouds, welcoming, forgiving, repeating infinitely across the horizon as if between mirrors; and slices of rain, pounding wet misery in the distance now, but soon in us, and in another part of the sky, a black stain, rainless.

taken from "Where'd you go, Bernadette" by Maria Semple