Daughters of the Sun

Seated on the roof of our old house, I watch as the sun begins to stagger to the horizon. In a few minutes, when the night emerges, omnipotent and inevitable, the family will gather to hear Nan’s stories of the sun.

             A crowd of us will huddle together, packed tightly like Uncle Jack’s cigarettes. The kids, though many of us are no longer children, sit on the floor, cross-legged on the dingy carpet, while the adults squeeze onto various decades-old lounges, chairs, and even crates from dad’s old worksite. Then, as Nan relaxes into her chair, and begins to reminisce, I will see a hushed flicker of joy in her ebony eyes as she recalls the days of sun.

             That is not to say that we do not see the sun now, but she is…

             “Old,” says mum.

             “Not in her prime,” says Grandad.

             “Oh, she’s knocking on deaths door,” says Uncle Jack.

             The sun is fading, only a whisper of her former glory. She hauls herself over the horizon at ‘midday’ and slinks back down to her deep abode at tea. Her rays of brilliant gold, as Nan describes them, “like the most wonderful hug”, are cold and closer to red than yellow.

             I shuffle uncomfortably, the tin roof panels digging into my thighs as I watch the fading sun.

             She won’t be around for much longer. We all know it. We don’t tell the younger kids though, let them figure it our for themselves. My younger sister, Julie, understood it about two years ago, eight years old and she went very quiet. Her russet eyes locked onto the sun as it began to fall away, and whispered, “It’s ok, sun. We’re all tired.” I closed my eyes and let her empty voice slide away into the silence.

             It is not only the sun, either. The stars are all fading, losing themselves to the darkness. Nan says that it’s the pollution, the smoke and lights that block out the stars. She says there used to be protests and petitions to prevent this… the reality that we now live. We were warned, but we simply didn’t listen. Didn’t act.

             I suppose some people just embraced the tragedy as it unfolded. Like a drowning person may after hours of treading water… they simply were too tired and gave up.

             Yes, the darkness is omnipotent. It leaks from the sky in heaving, oily drops into the souls of those who remain.

             The unwelcome epiphany of our dying world came to me surprisingly late, and completely accidently. I was fifteen. I suppose I had been in some rose-coloured world of denial, eagerly listening to Nan’s stories without understanding that the sun she knew and loved was gone. 

             Nan had insisted my name be Liane, daughter of the sun, for my honey-warm eyes which reminded her of the star she so adored. I never considered that now it may simply be a mocking reminder of what we have lost.

             It was the week Uncle Jack had run out of cigarettes and we weren’t able to get to the store because of the snow that sentenced us to house-arrest. Nan had a heartsick haziness in her expression as she watched the fire.

“One day,” Nan was saying, her voice warm like the crackling fire, “when the sun was high above us, we saw a rainbow that circled around her. It was a warning she announced that there’s a storm coming. But we were all at the beach and couldn’t care less.”

             Enraptured, I asked, “Will we ever see it?”

             Nan smiled sadly when I asked. “Maybe you will, Liane. Make sure you tell me if you do.”

             I had grinned at that, until Uncle Jack had scoffed. “Oh, give it up, mum. The sun’s a goner.”

             “Jack.” Mum snapped.

             “Oh, are you going to tell me I’m wrong? Kid’s will be lucky if the damn thing outlives them."

             And the beautiful stained-glass window of my whole world-view shattered into shards of grey. The house felt colder and smaller, Nan seemed infinitely older, the food seemed less, and the beautiful sun which I had idolised, seemed like no more than a dwindling flame.

             As the sun dips deeper into her abode, I climb down from the roof and enter to house.

             Similarly, my uncles and aunties, cousins and siblings all make their way to the living room. I sit beside Julie, who has drawn a noughts-and-crosses board into the carpet. I mark an ‘x’ into the corner square.

             Nan is already in her chair, petting the cat, Callie. Nan’s eyes seem more glazed-over tonight as she stares at the fire with an intense concentration. Julie places her ‘o’.

             “This is not a story of our sun. But of a star.” She pulls her eyes from the fire and smiles sadly down at the cat. “When I was very young, there was an event which was monumental.”

I pause, my fingertip ready at the carpet, ready to draw an ‘x’.

             “When a star, or sun, is very, very old, they can pass away. But, when she does, she does so with style and flair.” Nan locks eyes with me, and smiles. “It’s called a supernova. A colossal explosion of light and colour – its breath-taking.” She pauses for a moment, sighing. “I suppose the stars decide that if they must leave us, at least it will not be the end of their beauty. Or, maybe, as the world tends to do, it is leaving a message for us.”

             Nan’s dark eyes glimmer in the firelight as she murmurs softly, “A message, that even in the dark, there is some hope.”

             And though we are packed in a too-small room, though Uncle Jack coughs as his lungs fill with smoke, and though the world is dark outside the window, I smile as my Nan’s strength of faith, that even in this dying world, she still wakes for the sun each day, and reflects on her glory each night.

             I look towards Julie. Her dark eyes seem brighter, and I wonder if it is not only the firelight, but perhaps some internal flame growing brighter.

             And as I look back to Nan, I wonder if we will be able to share her blazing hope in the years to come.