Weave Me the Sunshine

The windshield wipers on the VW Bug were cranking at full speed when I left my mom's house. It was June, 1972, and I'd given birth to our second baby two weeks earlier. Dee was in Fort Lewis, Washington, for a six-week ROTC summer camp during the last week of my pregnancy, so it was my folks who took me to the hospital, sat through the labor, and got the first peek at our son. Baby blues, as they were called then, hit hard. It was a lonely time.

The Viet Nam War was going full steam, and we anticipated that Dee's active duty would start in December. When he won the draft lottery a couple of years before, he had joined ROTC in order to finish school and enter the army as an officer. He was committed for at least a year in Viet Nam. The three weeks I'd just spent without him made our future look very bleak.

While I was in the hospital with my new baby, Dee called from Washington. He reported that he was also in the hospital in intensive care. After an asthma attack in a foxhole, he had stopped breathing, and had been rushed in an ambulance to the emergency room. I worried and wondered for several days before hearing from him again. I had no way to call him; in the days before email and cell phones we often just had to wait for news.

He was in the hospital for about ten days, and finally, that afternoon, he had called with a cryptic sound in his voice. "I'll be home tonight." No explanation of why he was being sent home three weeks early. "Can you pick me up at the airport at 8:00?" I tried to coax more out of him, but he just said not to worry.

I was cautiously thrilled. Between my every-four-hour feedings I decided to make the 80-mile round trip to clean up our little home and get it ready for Dee's return. As I drove, I prayed out loud about our future, hoping for hope and peace of mind.

Timp seen from BYU Library

After I said Amen I turned on the radio. I noticed that the rain had stopped. As I went around a bend, the mist faded, and the supernal sight of Mt. Timpanogus appeared in the sunlight, sparkling with a dusting of new snow on the peaks. Peter, Paul and Mary were singing a song I'd never heard before:

Weave, weave, weave me the sunshine out of the fallin' rain; Weave me the hope of a new tomorrow, and fill my cup again.

They sang this chorus over and over and over, and I could feel my cup filling. My gloomy worries left; the sun had literally come out. I didn't know what was ahead, but I knew we were in good hands. Peter Yarrow wrote, Weave me the hope of a new tomorrow. I've always considered that song an answer to a prayer.

More to come. . . .

Do you have a special song?