May 15, 2024
Like the solar eclipse that we
knew for more than a year was coming, this past weekend’s geomagnetic storm
also produced something totally worth looking at, skyward: fabulous displays of
the aurora borealis. Unlike the eclipse, the knowledge that such a show might
be possible was more of a lastminute sort of event.
I have enjoyed, very much, seeing
all the fabulous displays that folks have photographed and made available both
online and to the news outlets. Our girls went not too far outside of town, to
a more rural area, and were able to see the northern lights for themselves—the
first time for both of them.
I can’t tell you how happy I
am that they’ve had that experience.
I’ve seen the northern lights
two times in my life. The second time was with David after we were not long
married. They weren’t really colorful that time as I recall, but they were
beautiful just the same.
But the first time is the
reason why I didn’t rush out to see the displays available over the last
several days. The thing is, I didn’t at first understand the inner hesitation I
felt to go and see this phenomenon. Who wouldn’t want to see the northern
lights? It was only after I sat quietly and thought about it that I understood.
I know that my decision to not go and see is overly emotional, but I’m okay
with that.
You see, the first time I ever
saw the aurora borealis was when I was somewhere between the ages of six and
seven. I was sound asleep in our little house out in a rural area, and then I
wasn’t. My daddy had come and lifted me from my bed. He told me he had a
surprise for me—something magical! As he carried me, I awakened more, and then
we were outside, in our front yard.
Daddy carried me across the
lawn to the driveway, and then walked toward the road. When we’d just passed
the border of the tall cedar trees that formed a visual barrier between our
front windows and the world at large, he stopped, then turned us to face down
the road.
“Look up,” he said.
I did and…. wow! At the time,
I didn’t know the science behind what I was seeing. I didn’t know that, in
those days, more than 50 years ago, this was a sight that could be seen where
we lived in Canada a couple of times a year. I only new that I had never seen
anything like this before. I only knew that what I was seeing must have been
magic! Waves of light, dancing for the stars like a curtain caught in a gentle
summer breeze. The colors weren’t of a vibrant hue, but more ethereal…the sort
of colors befitting whatever magical beings created them. It was special. I
was special because my daddy had woken me up and carried me outside to see it.
I became aware that my mom, my brother and my sister, were guests at this
magical dance, too. But I had my daddy holding me, and that had to make it, and
me extra special.
“Pretty,” I remember saying.
“So pretty.”
“Yes,” my daddy said. “Very
pretty.”
I didn’t know, either, at that
time, that this would become a core memory for me. Only later, much later, as I
grew up without this amazing man who had been kind enough to share with his
youngest child the secrets of the universe, did such a thing occur to me.
Come forward now to this past
week. I am getting closer to my seventieth birthday, and it is now more than
sixty years after my father’s passing. I contemplated joining our daughter on
her quest to see those same amazing lights. But she was going with our “second
daughter”, who is the mother of my late son’s children, and is to her a closer
sister than one born so could ever have been.
This was her time, this was their
time, and they shared this first experience—the wonder and the beauty of it—together,
which was as it should be. One more bond of sisterhood between them.
I’m grateful for the little
bits of understanding I gain as I travel this path that I’m on. I still want to
learn, and I still want to grow. I’m nowhere near done living yet.
And I still want to hang onto
that long-ago child’s sense of beauty and wonder and love.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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