Take an Umbrella….

Desperate for rain at this parched summer’s end, I happen upon an image of Renoir’s luminous painting The Umbrellas and stare for a long time. One woman, safely sheltered and impeccably dressed, looks serene, even a bit smug. But the woman in the foreground is dressed more plainly and is, I read, a milliner’s assistant. The basket I thought a picnic hamper holds a hat to be delivered. Some find her expression sad, or soulful. But I think her smile might be a bit wry, amused at the huddled masses behind her who are terrified of a little wet. I like her freedom, standing in soft light, free of spokes that can bend awry and black fabric that can drip forever.

Umbrellas have always left me ambivalent. As objects, they charm. What could be more amusing than a “bumbershoot”—a word Americans think is British silliness but use more often than the Brits do? Is anything brighter on a rainy day than one of those lucky red umbrellas that glow in Chinese watercolor streetscapes? And what could be more intriguing than Nietzsche’s single deliberate line in his journal: “I have forgotten my umbrella”? Derrida pounded and squeezed that jotted sentence, desperate to extract symbolic, ideally erotic meaning. But sometimes an umbrella is just….

Wait, though. It is not just an umbrella if it fires ricin-laced pellets, like the infamous Bulgarian umbrella, or is used in tradecraft to recognize one’s contact. Every quiet domestic object has a sinister side we work to forget. An umbrella stand by our door feels quaint and comforting. I love restaurants that keep umbrellas on hand for a sudden downpour; hotel doormen who hold an umbrella over you until you reach the canopy. It feels so civilized, this care we take to shelter one another from the rain.

Yet I rather like showing up at stuffy meetings dripping wet and laughing, shoes squelching loudly as I find a seat.

This was not always true. My first umbrella was white with red polka dots, edged in a ruffle, and I walked beneath it dreamily, sure that the neighbor boy I adored would see me and be smitten. I wish I had been a feisty feminist, jumping up on slick picnic tables like Gene Kelly and singin’ in the rain all by myself. Instead, I moped and dragged myself back home, where my Irish grandmother scolded me for daring to open the little umbrella indoors to let it dry. Bad luck all around.

There is a new Caillebotte exhibit at the Chicago Art Institute, featuring of course Paris Street; Rainy Day. Clearly, he painted at l’heure bleue, a twilight made soggy yet somehow more elegant as the rain grayed and muted the city. You can feel the cool mist, the startled giggle as an umbrella tilts and the drops splash onto pinned buns, velvet hats, and woolen cloaks. I remember a longago date, pizza in Rossino’s basement restaurant and getting caught in the rain on our way back to the car and thinking, “Wow, just like a movie scene.” Of course the experience is cliché: control abandoned and propriety dashed, the downpour an excuse to grab hands, and then, clothes clinging to our bodies, an excuse to strip them off. Is it any wonder that our elders always urge us to bring an umbrella?

For the uber-proper, a brolly is proof of precautions and a sensible nature. I avoid one to prove the opposite. I will never be Mary Poppins. Although now that I learn more about her ubiquitous umbrella—interpreted as allegorical, layered with mystical significance—I regret that. Pamela Travers, the original author of the Mary Poppins books, studied theosophy, Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, and Sufism. Her heroine flew, with that umbrella’s help, and she popped up magically whenever needed, dispensing esoteric wisdom through her fantastical stories. She had transcended the usual limits, something any child knows is possible, and the rest of us conveniently forget.

What I like about this discovery is the way it makes being protected exciting, an elevation of powers rather than a relief from fear. Usually when we want to be protected, it is from something that scares or threatens us. The first umbrellas shielded royals from the searing climes of ancient Egypt and Persia; later iterations shielded perspiring British colonizers and kept their wives pale. An Indian tale recalls a woman fending off a tiger with her umbrella.

And in many cultures, umbrellas have symbolized spiritual protection. The umbrella is one of Buddhism’s Eight Auspicious Symbols: in the compassionate shade of the Buddha, one is protected from the heat of suffering and the turbulent forces of the material world. In Catholicism, the red and gold umbraculum symbolizes protection and papal authority. Evangelical Christians diagram an “Umbrella of Authority,” with the largest umbrella representing God’s protection and beneath it, progressively smaller umbrellas for Christ, husband, wife, and children.

Academics used to talk about umbrellas, too—overarching concepts that contained and sheltered many smaller ideas. And long after Nietzsche jotted the absence of his umbrella, people began to speak of “a Nietzschean umbrella,” meaning a carefully constructed protection against uncomfortable truths. He knew our greatest weakness was our desperate need for certainty and comfort, and with God dead and buried, that need was sharper than ever.

But cheap umbrellas, reached for in a panic, tend to collapse. Sometimes it is easier to just get wet.

Read more by Jeannette Cooperman here.