The sky was filled with dark, juicy clouds threatening to split apart into storms at any moment, but the top was still down on the Miata when Lucy arrived to pick me up.

This morning, like most mornings, Lucy was blasting Judy Garland through the Miata’s exhausted stereo.

“CLANG CLANG CLANG went the trolley!” she belted, by way of greeting as I climbed in.

“DING DING DING went the bell!” she continued to sing, pulling out of the driveway.

All I could do was smile. There was no sense in competing with Judy or the wind buffeting as Lucy accelerated to a tidy 70 mph on the highway.

Besides, she was having a moment, and far be it from me to interrupt her Judy-time to point out that if we got caught in the inevitable rain, we’d have to pull onto the shoulder to wrestle the ragtop up, or that maybe it might be a good idea to put a little space between us and the dump truck in front, which was sporadically ejecting chunks and bits of whatever it was hauling onto the road and soon, I feared, into the car.

But Lucy’s blind optimism is as contagious as it is baffling, so instead, I let it all go and began to sing along.

The day was bright, the air was sweet…