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I wrote once about the joy of watching steam rise, an entertainment much more dynamic and specific than watching paint dry. In fact, they are not even in the same ballpark.
I wrote about pouring water from the kettle into my husband's Bodum pot and my green teapot and watching the steam curl lazily up into the kitchen air. Sinuously and sensuously the steam coiled, uncoiled, re-turned on itself, folded itself back into itself as moving water does. I wrote about it because it was a miracle and because—though I'd been making coffee and tea on that same tray in that same location for a year, I had never before seen the glory of the steam.
For several months I let myself be pulled into this magic every morning—one of those things you can put on your list of things to be grateful for.
And then—oh, what happened? We ate earlier or later or someone came to visit or—who knows? Whatever it was, something else caught my magpie attention and I forgot about the steam for a few months.
But when I went to look for it again, it wasn't there I poured the water, but no illuminated curling steam rose from either the coffeepot or the teapot. I was confused and disappointed, but, as with most disappointments, I got over it and put it out of my mind. If the memory of that magic happened to pop into my head again, I told myself to let it go. It was but a moment's passing fancy.
Several weeks ago I made our coffee and tea as usual and there, rising from the pots, were the two respective sensuous curlings of steam, so outstandingly beautiful that I couldn't have missed them. And it came to me: it was a question of light. It all depended on the angle of the sun, which slanted through the open door and lit the steam.
I ran to the calendar. It was June 10. And now I know that, just as the swallows return to Capistrano on the same day every year, so will the light hit the steam rising from our pots on June 10. I've enjoyed the experience now for two months, but I know that at some point it will disappear again—only, like the Moon and other sources of mystery, to return after the next long winter as my own private marker of returning magic.
