Sunglasses

"And now, if you move it slightly to the left, you'll be able to get a clear view of Jupiter," Joanie whispers to me. I do as she instructs me, and I am suddenly overcome with a numbness that could only have originated from shock.

"There it is," I sigh, as the image of the planet fills my telescope. It's absolutely breathtaking. It is insane to think of how far away it is from me right now. Yet, I can see it from right where I am. "Wow," is all that I can manage to say.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Joanie asks me. I nod, unable to take my eyes off of the gorgeous sight.

"Now, come on back over to the campfire, will you?" says her husband, Trent. He waves the two of us over. Joanie guides me over to my chair with her hand.

I reluctantly peel my eyes away from the massive planet and take my seat between my adopted parents. My adopted sister, Mackenzie, sits across from me, bouncing up and down in her seat. She is not very good at sitting still or keeping quiet.

"See that? Up there, by that big pine tree? There's the big dipper, right?" she asks.

"Yes, it is," Trent replies, following her outstretched hand with his blue eyes.

"How about over there?" Mackenzie continues. "Is that a constellation? It kind of looks like a dog if you squint." She squints her eyes so tightly that they are nearly completely shut.

"Mackenzie, I'm pretty sure that anything can look like a dog if you squint," Joanie chuckles, adding some more wood to the fire.

"What do you think, Sawyer? You've been awfully quiet since you left the telescope," Trent says, nudging me.

I fidget around with my soft, gray blanket as I try to find the right words to describe what I'm feeling. It's sort of a touchy subject.

"Well... I just... I just can't help but think about how... how they are looking at the same stars," I say. I say 'they' referring to my birth parents. The ones who didn't want me.

"Oh," Trent says. I can see his face color slightly in the moonlight. Mackenzie looks down at the ground. The two of them usually get a bit nervous when I mention my parents. Joanie doesn't though. She wraps her arm around me, just as a mother should.

"Well, you are right that they are looking at the same stars, but the ones that they're seeing just aren't as bright as these ones," she tells me.

"What do you mean? I ask.

"Well, when you're looking at the sun, what happens if you put sunglasses on?" she continues.

"It gets dimmer..." I say, slowly. I have no idea what she's getting at with this.

"And if you take off those sunglasses, what happens?"

"It becomes brighter," I respond.

"Exactly. You're birth parents will always be wearing sunglasses. Always. Because of the guilt that they have from not caring about you, they will always have the burden of the sunglasses. Everything in their world is a shade darker. Because Trent, Mackenzie, and I all gained you in our lives, our world is brighter. We don't have any sunglasses. We don't have that burden. You're birth parents may be looking at the same stars as us right now, but they are not nearly as beautiful- they never will be. They don't have you in their lives."

My heart begins to thump a little faster as I think about what she said. I brighten their lives. Me. A kid who has always been picked on. A kid who has never once gotten a grade higher than a C-. A kid who no one wanted to play with on the playground. A kid who was left alone outside because his parents didn't want him. A kid who has always felt worthless. I brighten their lives.

Well, I guess that I brightened their lives. Joanie and Trent both passed away in a horrible accident last summer. That night, around the campfire, looking up at the stars, was the last time that Mackenzie and I saw them before they left early the next morning. It's a pretty great final memory. They made it to the airport and climbed onto the plane for their business trip, but they never got off of it. The plane went down with them in it. Unfortunately, there were no survivors.

The past year has been difficult. Really, really difficult. I have never missed anyone more in my life. At least I have Mackenzie to lean on. I have even stopped calling her my adoptive sister and started just referring to her as my sister. That's how close we've become. Last night, we went outside and roasted marshmallows over a fire while we looked at the sky together. It brought back that beautiful last memory.

"You know what?" she asked me.

"What?"

"Remember that story that Mom told you? About how your parents always wore sunglasses when they looked up at the sky?"

"Yeah," I responded.

"I wonder if we're wearing sunglasses now. You know, now that they've left our lives," she said, smiling sadly.

"We're not," I replied, confidently.

"What makes you think that?"

"Well, they never left our lives."

"Sawyer, they died. What do you mean they never left our lives?" Mackenzie asked, looking extremely puzzled. It almost felt like Joanie was speaking through me as the next few words poured out of me.

"They're still here. Even if they aren't sitting around the fire with us right now like they used to be. We're looking up at them in the sky, and they're looking right back at us."

"That's a nice way to think of it."

"We're not wearing sunglasses, Mackenzie. And I know that we never will be. Now that I think about it, the stars look a bit brighter tonight, don't you think?"

And just as I finished speaking, two shooting stars- one after the other- flew over the treetops.