Some Miracle Blooming (or, “A Little Bit Medieval”)

My son and 90 other teenagers are up on the stage dressed in medieval robes. It’s June in the tropics. This vast events hall has no doors or windows. The lady seated beside me furiously fans herself with a program. I look around at all the parents in summer dresses and sport coats, manicured five o’ clock shadows and press-on fingernails. It’s ten o’ clock on a weekday morning and we are not at work. A girl called a valedictorian, wearing the lid of a small personal pizza box on her head, is talking about the New York Yankees. In a few months she will begin sinking into $400,000 of debt to earn a degree that is not very useful without a second, equally expensive, degree. None of this seems particularly rational. But sometimes medieval is beautiful.

Atami, El Salvador; May 2023

Halen sits in that small sea of caps and gowns. I watch the time slip into his lungs and expire into thin air. It’s here then it’s gone. Like a lot of things. He rises and crosses the stage, shakes hands with somebody who passed him a diploma. A photographer snaps his picture. He returns to his seat. I pay rapt attention. Something is happening, some miracle blooming, some worried wind gathering. We are all watching so hard, grasping so little. Like a language you can’t read written in a color you can’t miss.

The sky outside mumbles thunder but drops no rain. Somebody says it’s over. A slow flow of people outside, photos on a patio. Congratulations. Words, robes, embraces. Time softly shoves us from behind, almost imperceptibly. But I sense it seep through my ribs and paw at my guts.

Amman, Jordan; October 2007

I pull my son close. He is possibility, and muscle, and me, and momentum. I’m pushing him onward and holding him still at the same time, comprehending neither impulse. My eyes sting and fill with hot water. Something is happening beneath this senseless sky. I see it in my peripheral vision. I spin to look, but it’s gone. I can’t catch it.

Pueblo, Mexico; November 2021

There are suitcases and backpacks strewn about the house that don’t seem real. I’m helping my son stuff his life in there. The melting minutes stuff knots into my stomach. I drift off to sleep hoping tomorrow the sun will rise, the miracle will bloom.

I remember a night in the Nebraska badlands a long time ago. Flat, quiet earth chest to chest with dark endless sky. We had a tent scuffling with the breeze. Sometimes the world gets so empty you can feel it in your sleep. It gets in your dreams. It tells you stories without words. You listen without waking, then you wake without knowing why.

Crawford, Nebraska; June 2012

I unzipped the tent, stepped onto the midnight prairie, sleep like gauze in my eyes. I blinked once heavily, then twice in sudden wonder at all that insistent space out there that shook me awake. Someone had pulled that black canvas tight from horizon to horizon, then splashed it with impossible tidal waves and gusts of stars. They used every hue of starlight, from shimmer to space dust. They used every corner of canvas. My knees wobbled and my shoulders spun, gravity gave up, I fell upwards for awhile.

Then there was a nuzzle against my arm. Halen had padded from the tent, seven years old, had been standing there with me watching the night sky turn. I came back down, shook my head. Looked around at the badlands all bathed in night glow. Tousled Halen’s hair. I stared hard at the constellations cartwheeling across the universe. Drowsily considered transcendence, lost the thread. Watched the medieval stars with my son instead. Some miracle blooming.

San Salvador, El Salvador; June 2023

A decade later. Those dark hours of Sunday morning where Saturday night is still stumbling around. The curb outside the airport. This is where gravity pulled us. I hug my son and tousle his hair. Watch him collect his bags, smile, shuffle toward the check-in counter, the plane, the future. Some miracle blooming.

We are all watching so hard, grasping so little. Somebody said it’s over. They were probably wrong.