The Light

A young woman tracks the changes in her life between summers spent in Maine.

“Are you glad to be back?”

I stand before the large sitting room windows, wineglass in hand, watching a duck land smoothly on the water, plunge headfirst for food, and then resurface moments later, several feet away. The rain has blurred the horizon line so that the water before me seems to stretch its body right up and over our little house. It reminds me of my eight-year-old self pulling my white bed sheets tightly over my head for safety and comfort in times of trouble. I hear my father behind me.

“Yes,” I respond, not turning around. “I am glad.”

“Isn’t it funny how you can go a whole year without visiting a place, but then feel as though you’ve never left when you finally go back? I guess that’s what makes it home.”

Last time I stood here, I imagined my family untouchable. Isn’t it funny how much life can change in a year? I don’t say this to him. There are things I will say and things I won’t.

We go to dinner at the Thistle Inn. When our food comes, my father asks for the Lord’s blessing. His proffered prayer extends to each of his children in turn, name by name.

The omission is glaringly obvious. How many years have I spent listening to my father beg this prayer before each meal? He bravely calls it a joyful relief to list one child’s name no longer"to never need prayer for a child again. I’m not quite so sure.

My parents think me ‘well-adjusted.’ Beneath the surface, I’m lost at sea. It’s frightening. I pull my bed sheet over my head, but it brings no comfort.

By nightfall, the rain has not yet stopped. I expect to hear the tell-tale ringing of the foghorn, its call bringing seamen safely home to the harbor, but instead, there is only the soft whisper of the waves on the rocks outside our house.

“I wonder why the foghorn doesn’t sound,” I say to my mother.

“There must be no need for it.”

“But clearly there is,” I argue. “Look outside.”

“Maybe it’s too early in the season. There are no ships yet.”

The house was timeworn and inviting, its perch upon a hill beside the water affording a sweeping view of the harbor. The shingles were brown, the trim white, and the wood of the porch floor stained a soft cream beneath the feet of green wicker furniture. On warm, clear summer nights, the porch offered front-row seating for a flawless sunset. At the right time of night when the tide was high and the lights of the day had been turned off, a large, flat rock in the water in front of the house provided a bed on which to number the stars. Sometimes, they were difficult to count because they seemed to race each other, shooting across the sky every few minutes, proclaiming their freedom for all who cared to stop and stare. And then, when the gazers became too tired to watch any longer, warm beds with heated blankets awaited them inside, where they could fall asleep to the melody of the foghorn, accompanied by the instruments of the gentle waves. Sleep was dreamless. 

When we were little, we would come to Maine every summer and stay in an old schoolhouse. Alice, the woman on whose property this building sat, had turned the old structure into a home of sorts, with one bedroom, one bathroom, a living room, a tiny kitchen, and a loft. My parents always slept in the bedroom. My two sisters would climb the ladder up into the loft and set up a fort where they would pass the nights curled up beside each other. I would have loved to join them, but my fear of heights made climbing the ladder impossible. Instead, my brother and I shared the pull-out bed in the living room. At night, I would lay perfectly still on my side of the bed so as not to roll over and disturb him. 

He was six years old when I was born. My parents tell me that he would carry me around and protect me from my sisters, enamored with my baby fat and locks of curly brown hair. In fact, they say that one night at dinner as he watched me in my high chair, his face wrinkled in an effort to fight back tears. Noticing his discomfort, my mother asked him what was wrong.

“She’s the cutest baby I’ve ever seen,” he reportedly replied.

His captivation lasted until his thirteenth birthday. The dawning of the teenage years brought a need to throw off childish ways. Interest in his baby sister fell under this category. 

His disinterest lasted until his twenty-fourth birthday. The helplessness of cancer brought a shifting in perspective and the need to throw off Godless ways. Disinterest in the life of his family fell under this category. 

Over Thanksgiving break, 2012, I sat by his hospital bed, watching a football game with him. His Bible was spread open on his lap. He’d become quite the evangelist in recent weeks"sickness made him unashamed of the hope within him. Some strange mixture of both life and light drained steadily from him each day.

“I’ve been thinking about holiness,” he told me. “I feel bad because I’m trying so hard to treat the nurses in a way that shows holiness in me…”

He trailed off, his eyes shutting for a moment. His medication kept him permanently drowsy and liable to fall asleep even in the midst of the most rousing conversation. His eyes snapped back open a moment later.

“This is a good game, by the way,” he went on, pointing one shrunken hand at the television. His finger shook slightly from the effort of such a gesture. I watched the numbers on the heart rate monitor jump slightly. His hand fell back to his side and the pulse oximeter slipped from his finger.  On cue, the monitor began singing loudly. 

“You’ve got to keep this on,” I reminded him, gently slipping his finger back into the oximeter. The beeping stopped immediately.

“Thanks,” he murmured, his labored breathing betraying the discomfort he felt. 

The monitor jumped again as a fresh wave of pain took hold of him. The cancer had spread to the bones in his legs. The doctors said this was the most agonizing form of it because there is very little relief for bone pain. It was the cancer in his lungs that was killing him though. Only a few days before, he had broken his rib while coughing.

He groaned aloud at the intensity of the pain. I shut my eyes against the sight of him writhing in his bed, wishing I could shut my ears as well. Lord, please. God, help him. Take the pain away, God. Please. Take the pain away. Let me have it instead. I swallowed the bile rising in my throat and tried to harden myself against the noise of his suffering, instead focusing on the frenzied beeping of the heart rate monitor.

The nurse appeared then to give him another dose of pain medication. 

“It will be a few minutes before this kicks in, okay?” she reminded him as she uncapped the injection and replaced the plastic bag on his IV. 

The promise of coming medication offered preemptive relief. His moaning softened to a slight whimpering and then silenced entirely. His heart rate dropped and the monitor quieted. I breathed again.

“I have to tell you,” he said with a sudden strength of tone, “I have to tell you how smart you are. You’re the smartest girl I know. I never knew as much as you when I was your age. I did so many dumb things"but not you. You’ll be a good teacher. I’m sorry I didn’t appreciate that before.”

The effort of the speech took his breath away. He lapsed into silence, his eyes shutting in sleep once more.

“Thank you,” I whispered so as not to wake him up.

When it was time for me to leave, I pressed a kiss to his forehead"a sign of affection I never would have dared show him when he was healthy. 

“I love you,” I murmured, feeling a need to say it, though I was sure his doctors would heal him.

“Love you too,” he replied, his voice more ragged with each passing hour.

At the elevators, I focused my attention on the silver doors, trying desperately to hold back the tears until I was alone. My father joined me.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said.

He pulled me close to his chest. I lost the fight as soon as he touched me.

I shared the bed with my brother until I was ten. Each morning, my mother would wake up and make coffee. I would climb from bed and join her in the kitchen, my nightgown hanging to my knees and my feet bare and chilled in the crisp Maine air. Sometimes, she would tell me to put on jeans and then send me out for berries.

Dozens of blueberry bushes grew wild in the backyard. I’d take a bucket out and fill it halfway full of the berries, eating the other half as I went. When I’d bring them back to my mother, my fingers blue from the picking and my stomach full of the fruit, she’d reward me with a smile and give them to my father to use for pancakes.

We stopped going to the schoolhouse when all four children had reached double digits. We rented a different house each summer until we finally bought one of our own. Before the ink had dried on the contract for the house, I begged my mother to plant blueberry bushes in our new backyard. She told me that if I wanted them, I was old enough to plant them myself now.

I head to bed early on the first night back, weary and stiff from the twelve-hour drive. 

“Finish that wine before you go upstairs,” my father orders.

I drain the glass quickly, the warmth of the liquid burning my throat as I swallow. 

“That’s my girl,” he jokes proudly.

“If you hear me stumbling in the shower, you’ll know why,” I reply in a similar tone.

Once upstairs, I turn the knob in the shower all the way to the left. Steam fills the room and obscures the view of myself in the mirror above the sink. I peel off my traveling clothes and step into the water, its scalding temperature stripping away the dust, both real and imagined, accumulated from the journey home. 

I shut my eyes and stand silently in the stream for several minutes, wrapping my arms tightly around myself. I am shaken to attention by the sudden memory of my brother’s agonized groans. I hear them as clearly as though he were in the room with me. Take his pain away, I once prayed. And now we pray for him no longer. I release my breath and wait for my heart rate to slow to normal. 

When I’m done, I turn the water off and step from the shower, folding my towel around me. I pull my brush through my hair and slip into my pajamas. I can hear the steady rise and fall of my parents’ voices downstairs"they are sitting together in the sunroom.

I climb into bed and pull the blankets tightly around me. As I drift off to sleep, the foghorn begins to sound somewhere far off in the distance.

In the morning, the fog has lifted slightly and I can see the horizon now, separating grey waters from the white sky. I hear my mother brewing coffee in the kitchen below my room.

“Sun should be out today,” my father tells me as I travel downstairs in my pajamas, feet bare and chilled. “How about some pancakes?”

I take my coffee out to the porch. A ship is pulling slowly into the harbor, guided by the foghorn. I watch the light spread.