Under the sun and stars ~ December 3, 1992

David Heiller

When the sun and stars finally showed up last weekend, people stretched and smiled and went for walks under blue and sparkly skies. Eight straight days of clouds make you appreciate a bright November day and night a great deal.

I had to work on Friday, the first sunny day. When I got home at 3 p.m., my niece, Sarah, put her hands on her hips and said, “You’re late.” She had the deadly tone of a married woman.

A little Sarah loving.

Then she added, “Let’s go for a walk,” and I was saved, because there’s nothing that heals a nine-year-old’s feelings better than a walk down the road. Yes, nothing better than a walk with a niece you see about twice a year under a sun that you see about twice a month.

I cut up an apple as we walked, a golden delicious that Mom had brought with her. Some people bring a bottle of wine or a bag of pastries when they go calling. In Morocco, you bring a cone of sugar. Mom brings apples, which is good, because a walk wouldn’t be a walk without an apple to eat along the way.

So we ate our apple and waved to our neighbors, Rosie and Dorothy. Their two dogs came out to bark a greeting, and our dog nosed up to them for a quick hello.

I pointed out Binti’s grave in the field. “I planted flowers there but you can’t see them now,” I said. Sarah said she had been going to tease me about Binti, at her brother’s insistence. But the sunshine and the fact that she was holding my hand must have changed her mind. That made me smile.

David with one of our guinea pigs,
Olga de Polga, in his pocket.

And it led to Noah’s raising of a philosophical question: “What five animals would you bring back to life if you could bring five animals back to life?” I ticked four off quickly: Binti and two cats and a three-legged dog from my childhood. Noah rounded off the list with a guinea pig that died last summer.

That got me asking about what five PEOPLE you would bring back to life. I spoke quickly: two grandmas, my dad, and Lynette, my sister. “Lynette first,” I added before I could think.

Noah and Sarah couldn’t add to the list. Oh, to be nine again.

I looked at Sarah and Noah walking together. They are only thirteen days apart in age. Sarah has long dark hair and alabaster skin covered with freckles. She shows her mother’s Scottish blood. Noah is all blond and German and Norwegian.

I glossed over that. I saw how they smiled the same way, and for a second I wished that they were twins.

We passed and waved at Couillards, who were splitting a big pile of wood. Everybody was out enjoying the sunny afternoon. Even the animals. We discovered all kinds of tracks in the snow along the road: rabbit, squirrel, mouse, even a bird that Noah said was an owl. My guess was a grouse, but an owl sounded better, so I let that pass.

We turned into a field that held the remnants of a house and a chicken coop. Sarah crawled into the coop and retrieved a plastic egg. She pried up a rusty pail and an enamel pot with the bottom rusted out. She wanted to keep them.

“What are you going to do with them?” I asked sternly.

Sarah visiting with Queen Ida.

“Put flowers in them,” she said. She had given the one answer that would make me happy, and she knew it. I carried them home for her.

We returned with the sun glowing long and red on the winter horizon. I pointed out the moon, a pale thumbnail setting high in the west. Sarah couldn’t believe that little sliver was the moon. She asked if people could see it by her house in Cottage Grove. I said yes, and that her mom and dad were probably looking at it right now and thinking of her. She smiled at that.

When we got home, Sarah showed Grandma Heiller her treasures. I thought Mom would roll her eyes and sigh and say something like I had said, what most parents would have said.

But grandmas don’t say those things. She admired them and said, “Well, look at that. Isn’t that something?” She told us that the egg was probably placed in the coop to get the chickens to lay more. The long skinny pail had been used for milk, she said. Why yes, she had carried one like that when she was a kid.

Later, after supper was eaten and the kids were in pajamas, I carried Sarah and Mollie outside. I guess it was the last leg of our walk, to see the clear Thanksgiving heavens. The winter sky never disappoints. We were smothered with stars.

“There’s Orion,” I said, gesturing to the east as best I could, holding a kid on each arm.

“And there’s the seven sisters,” Sarah added, pointing straight up. Seven sisters? She had me on that one.

Sarah left the next morning. She forgot her milk pail and rusted pot. My guess is that she won’t even miss them. Next spring I’ll plant flowers in them for her, to help me remember a sunny walk and starry, starry night.