Princess Aurora Borealis

"What is it that scares you about our new house?" Mom would always say. I would just shrug my shoulders and say "I dunno" because it was impossible to pinpoint exactly what it was about that place that made it give off a horrible menacing feeling. Maybe it was the false wood panels on the closet doors. When you looked at them closely enough, you could see ghastly faces in the black and brown swirly lines. Like a person frozen mid-scream. Or maybe it was the moths that would flock to the window at night, desperately scrambling for the light but never able to attain it. Here, I couldn't go to sleep. Oh, how I longed for the days back at the old house when sleep didn't come only because I didn't want it to. 

If I think hard enough, I can remember myself back to one of those days. "Daddy, daddy" I had said, in an effort to put off sleep just a little longer "I have a joke to tell you." 

"Aurora," he called from the other room. "Isn't it past your bedtime?" 

"But Daddy, It's a really good one. I promise." 

"Better than my jokes?" 

"Much better." He was in the room then, I had his attention "What do you call a horse that has bad dreams?" 

"I don't know," he said. 

"Come on! Think a little harder" I goaded

"Honestly, sweetie I'm stumped"

"A nightmare" I can remember how I burst into giggles at that moment; I was so giggly I had to roll around in my bed to contain myself." 

"Oh, now that's a clever one. How do you come up with things like that" He was by my bedside then, and I could smell the chocolate on his breath. 

"Dad!" I exclaimed "Were you eating M&Ms without me?" 

"Maybe"

"Dad! You always do that after I go to bed. You eat all the good candy and then when I wake up there's none left for me!" 

"We'll go to the store tomorrow and buy some, Princess Aurora" he said 

"Okay!"

"You really have to go to bed now. Tomorrow is going to be a special day and you'll want to have lots of energy for it. If we're lucky, we might see the Aurora Borealis. The one you were named after."

I couldn't wait. Seeing the Aurora Borealis in all its rare glory won out over my longing to be part of late night adult conversations and partake in chocolatey midnight snacks. Soon after Dad left the room I had fallen into a deep, nightmare-less sleep. It doesn't even seem real that the night in my memory was only a year ago. Now sleep won't come, no matter how hard I try. I toss and turn all night, and if I ever do drift off, it's into a land of nightmares. The panels on the wall scream; the moths drop dead around me one by one. Even the cuckoo clock on the wall, completely harmless in the land of the awake, opens up its mouth and lets out a horrible roar at night. Mom bought this place fully furnished and the clock came with it. "Everything brand new." She said "we can start afresh." I knew the real reason was that the old house with its old stuff had too many memories of Dad. There was the big green leather recliner that he would always sit in, bookshelves full of his favorite novels; the little cupboard above the stove where he kept his brandy and cognac for special occasions. 

We never got to see the Aurora Borealis that night. We went to the highest hill in town, a local sledding hill, but the night was too cloudy to see anything. That night when we got home, Dad had an awful headache. 

"You need to go to the doctor's," Mom said, after four weeks of the same ailment. It's not normal to be having them this long." 

"I'm sure it's nothing" said Dad "You know me. I'm always fit as a fiddle." But after another week of the pain, after ice packs and dark rooms and turning off the TV did nothing, he could bear it no longer.

"I have an appointment with a Dr. Jacobs at 1:00 on Friday, he told mom and I. Hopefully he'll get to the bottom of this." 

The frustration when Dad got done with the doctor's appointment was palpable. Mom was still at work and Dad had come to pick me up from school instead of me going to my usual after school program. Until Dad actually got there, I was ecstatic, it was a bright sunshiny day and I was free from all the after school supervisors who would ask me why I was sitting alone reading a book instead of playing with the other kids. When Dad showed up, I saw the expression on his face and my excitement dissipated. He was trying very well to hide his anger for me, but it shone through just the same. 

"Let's go," he said. There was no offer of ice cream or a trip to the park. 

At home, Dad immediately went outside and started up the leaf blower. It was what he would usually do if he had a day off from work. That or some other job around the house. Mom used to joke that Dad was "allergic to relaxing". An astronomy major in college who now worked as a mechanical engineer. Dad was "the brain around the house" according to her. Usually, though, he would ask me to come along and "help" him. Helping involved jumping in the piles of leaves he had made for me with his leaf blower, which I realized years later had probably been more of a hindrance than a help. 

"Dad," I yelled, trying to make my voice audible over the leaf blower. "What's wrong?" It took a good minute of me shouting and waving my hands around until I finally got his attention. When the noise came to a stop, he spoke "What?"

"Dad," I said, "You seem so upset. Did something go wrong at the doctor's office today?"

"Nothing you need to be concerned about darling."

"But Dad," I said, "We tell each other everything. You have to tell me." 

"Okay" he said "The doctor won't give me any tests. He says it's probably stress. I call baloney on that one. Have you ever known your Papa to be stressed?" 

I shook my head, frowning. 

The weeks after that were a blur in my memory. Dad and mom's growing frustration. Multiple doctor's appointments that finally led to them getting a second opinion. They were so happy when they made the appointment with the new doctor. Dad said to mom, "Now this lady, she's gonna help, she's gonna figure everything out." "I hope so," she said, a tentative smile on her face. Then the diagnosis came and the happiness was shattered. It was brain cancer. Dad had a few months to live if he was lucky. 

People thought I didn't understand what was going on at the time. Mom, my aunts and my uncles did everything they could to try to protect me from the horrors that were so clearly unfolding right before my eyes. Did they think I didn't know? That I didn't stay up at night and listen to their hushed conversations in the kitchen. It was the only way I could get any real information. Dad was the only one who had been real with me. He understood that at seven you knew a lot more than people gave you credit for. I did everything I could for him. I held his hand and told him jokes. I tried as hard as I could to make him at least a little happy, though it seemed like an impossible task. I was with him up until the end. 

When Dad died, it felt like the world was a completely different place: darker, scarier. Mom was always crying, either big heavy sobs or a trickle of tears. I was always with different aunts and babysitters and a lot of the time with the after school program. Then we moved and things got so much worse. To the little country house that my mom loved so much but was nightmare fodder for me the second the lights went out. 

Now I tried to sleep. I laid back in my little bed and closed my eyes and willed it to happen. But to no avail. All I wanted was for Dad to come in and make me laugh. If that could happen then all the scariness would disappear. 

"The best thing you can do when you can't sleep is to get up and do something else." I could remember mom saying "Read a book or walk around. Sitting there thinking about not being able to sleep only makes it worse." So I followed her advice. I got up and went to the kitchen. The kitchen is always the best part of a house, no matter where you live. I was about to reach into the cupboard and find myself a midnight snack when mom appeared. 

"You can't sleep either?" she asked

I nodded. 

We sat in silence for a few moments, and then mom came over and enveloped me in one of her big comforting hugs. For a minute I felt like everything was going to be alright. Then Mom looked out the window and gasped. 

"Sweetheart, look!"

I turned around and through the window I could see the purple and blue hues that painted the sky. It was so beautiful, it didn't even look real. The Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights. Suddenly, it was like Dad was right there next to me. I could almost hear him explaining "All of that you see is from little particles sent out from the sun. The same sun you see shining brightly on a summer day. There are big storms up on the sun that cause them to get carried down to earth and collide with molecules in our atmosphere. The collisions make those beautiful colors." In that moment I knew that Dad, somewhere in the universe, was smiling down on me. From that point forward, the house was no longer the house of scary faces and shadowy corners; it was the house where I got my special gift from Dad.