Cities and Lights at Night

I was standing in the kitchen when Riley called my attention to this picture he’d made in Windows Paint .

Mum! he said. I made a city all on my own.

When I looked up, from a distance, I thought he’d somehow googled a satellite image from some cityscape from somewhere in the world. It made sense. Look, there were the blotches of light, in lines, like roads; they weaved in and out like roads often did.

Or was it a satellite picture? No, as I walked over, with every step, it became obvious that he had made it, the white was just blotches; the black just…a black background. What was three dimensional was now two dimensional; but to me, it didn’t matter. It was magic because he found it magical. He had created his own world, a city at night, and no one could take that away from him.

***

When I think of night, I think of that horror car ride back to Kempsey the night dad died, fighting through Sydney’s Friday night traffic – how could I have ever forgotten that nightmare? – with me dry-retching because I wasn’t used to my sister’s boyfriend’s driving; I didn’t know how he took his corners, I hadn’t acclimated to the physics of his backseat. So by Taree we’d swapped seats to ease my car-sickness, and I managed to fall asleep in the front seat, my head dipped down onto my chest, and I woke in time to glide through the outskirts of Kempsey in the darkness, with the moonlight glinting off all the puddles. The river was swollen, the banks a mess from the minor flooding, and we kept on driving until we made our house. The powerful outside lights were on, waiting, and there stood my grandparents, on vigil, and my grandmother met me as soon as I stepped out of the car. I turned my head away from the glare and watched her hand as she took mine in it.

“He died very peacefully,” she said, wanting me to know this first, above all else.

They’d held his hands as he passed, a wife and a mother-in-law on each side. Mere hours later, hers were then holding mine, and I drew comfort from that; that after what was possibly the worst ride in my life I could emerge into a greeting of love and care.

When I think of that day, I try to keep it at a distance. I am still grieving, haven’t yet properly cried. Perhaps I am afraid of losing perspective; that from a satellite’s distance I am safe because I have the benefits of abstraction. If I go closer, I will remember the dirtier, sadder, more human moments. Instead of the lights, I will see the white dots of an amateur’s work.

But I remember her hands. Her hands guide me back down, when I want to stay above, in the air of my son’s making, basking in the glory of cities and lights at night.