Amelie is in a bad mood. This is rare. As rare as four consecutives sunny days in my town.

Amelie is always sunny, but today I see a small cloud, like that of cartoons, over her head.

Amelie is going to school. It is raining. Thin, cold rain.

I stop the car. Now it comes the hardest time. I think the farewell will not be easy this time – most of the time it is. I am hoping that someone very smiling will come to pick her up.

The teachers and assistants who come to pick her up are always very friendly. There comes one. And in addition to her smile, she carries in her right hand something that will change our lives, mine and Amelie´s, forever: a yellow umbrella.

Yes, that is right, a simple umbrella of yellow color.

It is not just any yellow, dull. It is not golden yellow. It is not canary yellow. It is not lemon yellow. I cannot describe it. I seek words, adjectives, a dictionary. Maybe: yellow-sun. I made up.

I look at Amelie through the mirror and the change of face is amazing. It touched me. She fell in love with it. Everything around her it seems to have lost its meaning, fading out. The yellow umbrella is now the center of attention.

As the lady approaches with that wonderful shiny yellow object, Amelie opens a beautiful smile, the smile of someone who will gain something she always wanted and never knew she wanted. A smile of achievement!

The lady is offering me this beautiful yellow thing! – She must have thought.

Do I have to say that Amelie forgot she had a father at that moment?

Yeah… There she went on the teacher´s arms, radiant, smiling broadly, holding the silver stem firmly, parading, enchanted, among all the people and children with her yellow-sun umbrella.

Her day was not the same after that encounter. She knew how to enjoy the moment in an unexpected way, leaving aside her bad mood, being sleepy, and whatever it was that was bothering her. It was as if the present had reminded her of something good, something that she had momentarily forgotten.

However, I still saw something else, which made me think that maybe that was not just any umbrella, it was, maybe, an umbrella with magical powers.

The daylight – which was little, but resisted – passed through the transparency of the rain mask and illuminated my daughter with such golden light so intense that I could not help but notice and admire it.

I confess that I am not sure if it was Amelie who made the sun under the umbrella, or if it was that light that made itself yellow when passing through the fabric of that color. The truth is that there, where she was, the sun was shining.

And there she went, making sun under the umbrella on an ugly winter day…

*    *    *

Our life is not only full of afflictions, but also full of yellow umbrellas. There is always an arm extending towards us out there… They save our day almost unintentionally.

We lack, perhaps, the sensitivity to perceive them. For us a yellow umbrella is just a yellow umbrella.

Life is so full of imagination! It is so full of options, of possibilities… Of small right cheers!

Seeing beauty in these little things is an art… The art of being happy.

I know that one day we will stop saying that these things are little…

Amelie is little. She is two years old.

Amelie is one of my yellow umbrellas.

Sunny of storming, I do not leave home without it anymore.

Spiritist Moment Team.
April, 3.2020.