ジャッキーの これ、どう思う？ While we're on the topic ...

Jackie's trailer under a sunny sky. JACKIE HOFFART PHOTO

There is no rainy season in Vancouver. Or rather, every season is a rainy season. I heard the other day that this June is on course to be the coldest and rainiest in Vancouver's history. And yet no one is surprised. People complain, but to live in Vancouver is to tolerate the rain and get on with life.

Lately, I've cared a lot more about the weather than ever before, because I'm making films at school. The script for the movie I just shot called for a scene to take place on a sunny day. It was important to the plot of the story that it be sunny, so we couldn't be flexible about it.

There are a million details to work out in order to shoot a film, but one of the few things you can't really do anything about is the weather. Often people work around this by swapping scheduled filming days, but that can also be quite complicated because of the schedules of actors and locations. Anyhow, for mine, none of that mattered. We had borrowed a vehicle for one day for this sunny-day shot and so we couldn't reschedule. It had to be sunny. It was all or nothing.

I often joke about being really good at getting what I want, but I don't think it's because I'm special or entitled. I think it's because I try not to take anything for granted. I work really hard to ensure my own success. So I started early with the weather gods.

About a week before the sunny-day shoot, I posted a request on social networking sites asking my friends to "visualize sunny skies" for my shoot day. It had been a disappointingly rainy and gray week, so people were quite happy to chime in and visualize that for me! (If my script called for a rainy day, my friends would probably be less willing to help out visualizing that.)

I don't really trust weather forecasts that much, especially if they are forecasting more than a couple of days the future, because everything changes anyway. Our forecast kept changing between sunny and cloudy. I knew we had a chance. I kept on trying to be as optimistic as I could, in the hope that my personal pleading would somehow affect the weather.

And it did! The day didn't start out sunny, but by the middle of the afternoon (when the light was best anyway) we got our sun-and-blue-sky shot. I was so happy! (We got lucky.)

In everyday life though, living in rainy Vancouver can be hard for me. I grew up in the Prairies, where even if it was winter and minus 20 degrees, the sun would still be shining and the sky would be big and blue. For a prairie kid, the only time the sky really changes is when there's about to be a thunderstorm, or worse, a tornado. (That's when the sky turns a really sickly green and purple color, it's very frightening!)

I find gray skies and rain to be rather depressing and I have to work really hard not to let the weather affect my mood too much. It still does, but I just have to focus really hard on enjoying the sunny days, and try to be thankful for living in such a green and lush place. There's green grass and flowers almost all year round here, and when the sun shines, it feels like the most beautiful place on Earth.

Lastly, I'd like to just say a word about hydrangeas, another flower I learned to love while living in Japan. The Hydrangea Room was the name of the special education room at one of the elementary schools I taught at in Onomichi. I was told that the hydrangea is a symbol for struggling through adversity because, unlike most other flowers, which close up their petals when it rains, the hydrangea opens its petals in the rain. It thrives even though most other flowers would find the conditions too difficult. I think this is a really apt symbol for children with special needs and I am reminded of that every time I see hydrangeas.

Next time: My topic is ... tattoos