Dimly Lit

     There were a few years when, for my birthday, my dad and I would take a day trip together.  It was a wonderful present. For few hours, I would get him all to myself away from my little brothers, church people and household demands. One year we shopped, another year we rode a roller coaster, and once we spent the entire day searching for typos in the signage at the Star Trek exhibit. One year, when he asked me what I wanted to do I didn’t have anything planned so I answered, drive. I didn’t have a destination in mind, nor did I have a reason for wanting to drive, but we climbed into the old blue Taurus and spent the afternoon speeding down the highway and winding through quiet backroads. I honestly don’t remember what we talked about; I was in junior high, so it was likely about boys or friends, or how I didn’t understand either. For a time, that’s how we spent the afternoon, he drove and I talked, my head pressed against the cool window, gazing up at the  summer sky. 

  West of us, a thick blanket of pewter gray clouds was folding over the rough mountain range that housed Redrock Canyon. As I watched the sky, an opening formed in the clouds and golden sheets of sunlight fell on the mountain that I thought looked like a dragon’s tooth. I pointed to the patch of sunlight and asked Dad if we could chase it. He turned the car towards the mountain and we tracked the long beams of sunlight until they disappeared. Another opening formed north of us and we again turned the car towards it. I was glad Dad didn’t ask why I wanted to reach that  elusive circle of sunlight because I couldn’t quite explain why. Somehow though, I was sure that God was in that circle. I knew that if I could sit down beneath that opening and stare up through the break in the clouds that God would answer all of my unasked questions. Twice more we chased the openings until they vanished before we gave up and turned toward home.

  My younger brother Josh is in his twenties. We weren’t born friends or born rivals, we were born sister and brother and that distinction has defined our relationship for the last twenty years. He’s different than Caleb, my youngest brother. He’s not as sharp as or as witty, but he’s frank and artless, like a favorite childhood book you turn to when you need to be comforted and always come away from having learned something. Even now, in his early years of adulthood, I picture him most clearly as a ten-year-old boy on the pitcher’s mound, thick blond hair stuffed under a scruffy baseball cap, wearing an over-sized uniform and listening for our cheers from the stands.

  “I don’t want to play baseball anymore, Ames,” he told me one night as we sat on my bed talking after a game. “I still love the game, I just don’t know if I have the stuff to keep going.”

“Josh, we all think you do,” I said and looked up at him. “Every coach you’ve had has been impressed by you. It’s not like we’re all just lying to make you feel better.”

“Well, it’s not that. As a pro player you have to travel all the time. How can you raise a family or be a dad if you’re always on the road?”

“I don’t think you need to worry about that right now, Bubba. That’s a long ways away.”

“I know,” he said and sighed. He leaned back against the headboard and stared up at the ceiling. “I just don’t want to be wasting my time on a dream that I don’t believe in anymore.”

In that moment, I got a glimpse of who he was becoming, of the man he would soon be. As I watched him talk, he shifted his body, blocking the light from the lamp next to my bed. He turned to face me, his face concealed in shadows.

I was eight when my family left our home to move into a cramped rental in Las Vegas. My parents followed God’s call from California, leaving behind family, friends and a home that they had worked hard to save for. For seven years we waited, living month to month on a pastor’s salary and praying for a home of our own. During those seven years, we watched those around us get their miracles, get there homes. We celebrated with them but in the back of our minds we whispered, ‘why not us, God?’ One night, under the fluorescent lights at Jack-in-the-Box, Dad told us to give God a wish list. We went around the table vocalizing our dreams, building a dream home with our words.

“A pool,” Caleb said. Josh and I nodded in agreement, imagining long, hot summers by the poolside.

“I want five bedrooms,” Dad said. “So when Grandma and Papa come they have a place to stay. What do you want, Sis?”

“I want my own bathroom,” I replied and the boys agreed. Happy, I’m sure, to be rid of me and my girl products. Josh added that he wanted a big back yard and Mom imagined for herself a Jacuzzi tub. 

Two years later, we walked into the God House for the first time. We looked around and saw each item on our wish list and we knew He had heard us. 

The God House pool was shaped like a kidney bean and had one light with a blue and red filter. In the summer, we played Marco Polo at night with Dad, turning the water red or purple or bluest of blues, and we laughed at how it changed the color of our pale bodies. We lived in the God House for three years before He asked us to leave it all again and move to Idaho. The pool light broke a few months before we moved, like the house was powering down or the divinity was leaving as God called us onward. We took our dreams with us to Idaho, even though we had to leave the God House behind. We took with us the promise too, that when we speak, He hears.

In every house there seems to be two types of light bulbs: those that turn on with a pop and those that light quietly. The bulbs that pop draw heat in too quickly, rapidly heating the cooled filament that makes them glow. Over time, the extra expansion breaks down the filament until it is weakened enough to break. When this happens, the light bulb flashes with one final “pop” and then goes dark. The silent bulbs draw in heat evenly, warming, glowing and then cooling when the switch is flipped and the heat released. When the filament weakens, the bulb is no longer able to sustain the heat. Sometimes the bulb flickers, but most often, it stays dark and goes unnoticed for weeks. 

My dad’s laugh reminds me of a light bulb. Joy wells up inside of him until it comes bursting out: loud, bright and immediately distinguishable. He draws in people with his laugh and makes them feel warm and comfortable. He draws people in with his grief as well, making them feel a part of his life, an empathizer, a co-griever. My mom is more private; her laugh is no less sincere, it shakes her down to her toes, but it’s quiet. Her grief is also quiet and unless you are paying attention, you’ll miss it. Because both her joy and her grief were silent, I used to think that she felt things in lesser measure than Dad. But as I’ve gotten older and experienced my own share of joy and sadness, I’ve recognized my error and have learned that while I laugh like my dad, I grieve like Mom.

There are over two thousand species of lightning bugs in the world. Most are brown, soft-bodied beetles that flash and glow gently to attract a mate. Their bodies glow soft shades of red, green or amber when chemicals in their bodies mix with oxygen in a process called bioluminescence.  For most species of lightning bugs, the majority of their life is spent in childhood, emerging from the larval form to live a couple of brilliant weeks as adults before dying. I was five the first time I saw them one summer at my Uncle Norman’s house in New Mexico. Josh and I danced among them at dusk as they swam, lazy in the Southwest humidity, over the backyard where Aunt Norma sang to her garden. We stopped our dancing and bore the pain of the prickle grass biting our feet so we could listen to her croon to the zucchini.  She pulled me in among the towering tomato plants to whisper the secret of her vegetable garden. 

“I sing to my plants, Amy,” she said, “if you take the time and pay attention to something, it’ll grow for you.” 

I leaned in against her side; she smelled of herbs, rich soil and fresh drop biscuits. We sat together in her garden while the rest of our family laughed on the patio. She worked and I watched the lightening bugs as they danced to the rhythm of her garden hymns.

That winter, Dad packed us into our red Jetta and took us to Memorial Hospital in Modesto to visit my cousin Cody. He got in and turned up the radio so I couldn’t hear him and Mom talking. Josh slept in the car seat next to me and Caleb, still unborn, rested within Mom’s womb. Outside, the rain made the light from the street lamps puddle messily on the sidewalks and on the droplets on the car window. During a lull in the music I heard Dad say the word “cancer.” 

“What’s going on?” I asked. 

“Cody’s sick,” Mom answered. 

An inoperable brain tumor is when the tissue of the tumor is interwoven with normal brain tissue. Cody was three when he was diagnosed with a malignant, inoperable brain tumor. The doctors gave him a year to live; he was in remission for almost ten. Puberty is triggered when the brain sends a signal to the body to begin producing a cocktail of hormones that stimulate growth.  Around age eleven, Cody’s brain sent that signal, and a year and a half later, after a few months of adulthood, he died. 

Next to my bed is a lamp with a CLF light bulb. It takes two clicks to turn it on and a few seconds to be fully lit. The other night I turned it off, but instead of turning away into my pillow, I watched it. It took a moment to fade, glowing faintly green against the cream colored lamp shade. Fascinated, I turned it on and off again to watch the eerie green glow dissipate into the darkness of my bedroom. As I watched, I knew I was missing the metaphor but it was alright, perhaps I’d understand tomorrow. For now, I’m content with not knowing, with waiting, with lying here and watching it fade.