Been thinkin’ about…sky change

I took off running after the July thunderstorm, running to the top of the south hill where the big hawthorn grew, running past the grapevines and the plum thicket and the day lilies wet with evening rain. The sky was clearing and I knew, somehow, I should be high up on the hill for the moment was gone. I was only 17 then but I knew, somehow, that the big moments were the small moments that no one else could see even if the moments were those I could scarcely explain or understand. I was only 17, but I could run back then, and I am beginning to wonder if I can run again.

That sky cleared fast and strong. I stood up there near the hawthorn, black bark and thorns oily, the dark, almost-crabapple-like leaves glistening. It seems the tree itself was listening for something and I whispered something to myself and maybe God about the sky and the future and the past. I sometimes lived in the past, lived in the family stories that had gone on before me, lived in the black-and-white photos of my ancestors, and lived in my books, especially the ones about the Second World War. I tensed, that summer evening clearing high on the hill, as I felt something change.

The wind picked up and the far northeast sky — far off toward a place called Chicago — was a flat cyan, the blue the color of the past. I tensed and it was as though time had parted along with the clouds, and it seemed, far, far away, I could hear the sound of a hundred engines droning. Not jet engines or modern turboprops like the commuter flights from Peoria to O'Hare, but instead a deep-throated churning in the sky. And for a moment, it was as though I could see the big planes — the kind I had read about, the big four-engine bombers — flying again in solemn formation, winging eastward into the darkness and the coming night. The war was east and so long ago so many of us never came back. Once, long ago, boys like me raised their eyes to the sky and watched the planes and wondered. And once, long ago, boys like me were bundled against the stratospheric cold and held the controls firm, flying eastward, into the darkness and coming night.

The world never quite looked the same after that moment. My sense of time returned to normal. The sound of the planes was gone. The sky was just the sky, normal and mundane. I stumbled back to a kitchen and a peach cobbler and a life that was as good as it was also mundane. My head was soon distracted by responsibility and expectation. I would grow up.

The Russian olives and the white oaks were blooming that sunlit evening in May. The world was blooming even as my old life died. Innocence cannot be really appreciated until it is already gone and there are no words to prepare for death. My mind was awash in the thousand reasons the experts were wrong. My heart knew differently. "Cheer up, child, hell, the worst is yet to come," my grandpa would say lovingly but he had died five years before and had nothing now to say. And the worst had come. My mom was dying and there was nothing I could do but watch, sealed out from her journey, alone and hating the sugary-sweet smell of the Russian olives as they bloomed, hating the smell in ways deep and profound. I could not understand how a world could be so beautiful and so horrible all at once. I remember the slant of the sun precisely that golden hour on May 12, 2011, but in my memory I can see the light but cannot touch the sky or leaves or blossoms. The beauty was too far away for me to reach. My heart was gray.

Fifteen years, then another 13. The worst happened again. Ambulance lights in the yard, then a cold ER at midnight, followed by 11 days of the unknown. I scheduled my grief between meetings, between markets, between auctions. Dale, who for all intents and purposes, has become my parent, lay in an ICU ward an hour away, unconscious, and the experts could only say was, "We have to wait and see." But I drove home from Arkansas one July evening just a year ago, Luke Combs' songs in my head, and the northern sky began to clear in sunset. I cannot explain the reason, but the sky was one of hope that night. Hope that aching loss might be staved off yet. That this time grief might just be mitigated. That this time, I might perhaps win.

Time is a funny thing. I should be 17 yet, but I'm not. I should not be middle-aged, but I am. But the sky still whispers things, filling my heart with hope and loss, of secrets oft unseen, of the profound sadness of this world, and the transcendent beauty of life. The real miracles are those so tiny we too often overlook them. A thousand-million tiny moments. The brush of a hand. The look of love in the eyes of another. The earth, the cosmos, is the miracle and we are here but to bear witness.

And now, one year later, I walk on the grassy trail and look up at sunset. The sky has begun to clear.