I remember the first time I witnessed the northern lights. As memories so often go, I don’t remember the exact date, but I remember stepping out of my parent’s car in the driveway at the ranch and my dad telling me to look up. I was 9 or 10 or 11 or 12, one of those ages that blend into one another in childhood, and it was spontaneous, the way things like the northern lights used to be before we could predict them in the way we do now, announcing their arrival on an app or a website or a social media post to help others experience it. Which is a lovely perk of the modern age…
But maybe not the same as stumbling upon them in the way that we did that night, a little piece of magic we witnessed as mere humans who just happened to look up at the right time.
I found them again years later in the dead cold of January when my dad was recovering from a very close brush with death in a hospital bed in the big town. I think my husband was driving me home from a visit with him and I caught a glimpse of them out the passenger window, green and white and gold light dancing on the dark horizon reminding me how small we are here in the scheme of things. Reminding me that even the coldest night can be beautiful if we look up.
Last weekend I walked to the top of a big hill overlooking the ranch with my mom and both of my sisters. It was Mother’s Day and it was just the four of us. We stopped along the way to pick handfuls of wild sweet peas to lay on the spot where we placed my grandmother’s ashes just about a year earlier. We caught our breath when we reached the top, laughing at my big sister who always wears the most impractical outfits and footwear for the ranch. We put our hands on our hips and quieted, looking out across the neon green landscape, catching the scent of the plum blossoms on one of the most perfectly beautiful spring days. It occurred to me then that the four of us—our mom, and the daughters she raised spread across the decades—have likely never been alone like this together, out in the wilds of the ranch. No dads, no kids, just the women here, looking out. Looking up. We placed those sweet peas on the little stacks of rocks and remembered my mother’s mother and noticed a little yellow butterfly make its way through our gathering before heading back down that hill to share a meal and watch the kids play in the lawn.
Recently, my dad brought home a little black-white-face calf to the barn. He had been out checking cows and noticed it wet and left behind, potentially a twin to another brand-new calf nearby who was up and sucking. He placed a little “x-marks-the-spot” on his head to distinguish it from the other calves so he could come back and check on him to be sure he wasn’t claimed before taking him back to the barn to try him on a bottle. We rounded up our daughters to give the calf a proper welcome, glad he was found, and a little worried if he would ever figure out the bottle.
That night my oldest daughter fell off a pony we’ve been working on. She was fine but my husband and I, we felt terrible. “If only if only if only,” are the things we say when little accidents and close calls happen. We always think we should know better. She got back on and shook the scared off before we returned home right before dark to eat a cereal supper.
I missed the northern lights that night despite all the places and ways it was forecast so we could make plans to witness it. We laid our kids down safe in their beds, I said a quiet prayer of gratitude and fell asleep as the last bit of light fell under the horizon. While we dreamed, the lights danced around us and our friends and neighbors took to porches and lawns and parking lots to stand in awe. Turns out, magic happens, even when you’re not looking…
But oh, when you do! Oh, when you do!
Meanwhile, back at the ranch... 