I was setting bowls down for the cats, just moving through one of those slow, slightly off days that come after being sick. Not bad enough to stop everything, just enough to make it all feel a little distant, like I was a step behind my own life.
They circled my legs, impatient and steady, completely present in a way I wasn’t.
I glanced out the garage door and there it was.
A rainbow stretched wide across the sky like it had been waiting for someone to notice.
And I did what I always do. I stopped.
Because I am the kind of person who chases these things. The sky, the storms, the quiet moments most people pass by. I have stood in fields for stars, driven back roads for light, waited at the edge of days just to catch something fleeting before it disappears.
That part of me hasn’t gone anywhere.
Even sick, even tired, even a little disconnected, I still feel it. That pull. That instinct to look, to notice, to hold onto something beautiful for just a second longer.
I finished setting the bowls down faster than I meant to and went inside.
“Hey, come look.”
She’s four, so she ran like it mattered. Like wonder is something you have to meet halfway or you’ll miss it.
Her hands pressed against the window, her whole face lighting up in a way that felt familiar.
“A rainbow! Aunt Kelly, it’s a rainbow!”
And then, like it was the most obvious truth in the world,
“There’s a pot of gold at the end.”
And I smiled, because I understood her more than she realized.
Not the gold.
But the chase.
Because that’s what it is.
Not just seeing something beautiful, but believing there is something worth moving toward because of it.
I don’t believe there is a literal pot of gold waiting at the end of a rainbow.
But I do believe in standing in the cold for stars.
In chasing storms across open land.
In pulling over on gravel roads because the sky decided to become something more for a few minutes.
I believe in going after wonder like it might slip through your fingers if you don’t.
Standing there, still not fully myself, still carrying that quiet weight of the last few days, I realized something.
Wonder didn’t feel smaller.
It just felt a little further away in that moment.
But it was still mine.
Still there in the way I stopped.
Still there in the way I looked.
Still there in the part of me that will always turn toward the sky.
She saw a pot of gold waiting.
I saw something just as real.
A reason to keep chasing.
So remember to follow it.
Not just to notice the beauty, but to move toward it.
To step outside, to look longer, to go a little further than you need to.
Because wonder isn’t something you either have or lose.
It is something you choose, again and again, every time you decide the sky is worth looking at.
The Stars Take Note 