New York City, May 3, 2016

★ Not enough rain was falling, or not big enough drops of it, to justify opening the little green umbrella on the way to preschool. Nor was there enough to convince the four-year-old to take custody of the umbrella for later. The dampness made it chilly outside the clothes and hot inside them. The early rain landed so softly that the puddles on the bare grainy dirt of the tree planters were clear water, like a spring filtered up through sand. A little more than an hour later, it was falling hard enough to stream from the scaffold. It was streaming from the canopy over the subway mouth on Union Square, too. Just beyond that, a dangling little radio played the news under the shelter of the array of the fivedollaUMbrella man. The spray was blowing too hard for five dollars to have much hope of making a difference. Then it blew even harder. The afternoon dried out but got no more inviting, and in the middle of rush hour a faint drizzle returned. It took effort, under the pall, to see that all around was bright green.