An Old Turtle Checking On Me

Tonight I drove to the neighborhood where I grew up and visited a very kind woman with a brogue, my adopted mom. She told me that they built a road into the pasture where I played as a kid. They are putting a housing development there. It was only a matter of time, every inch of that town is being devoured by sprawl these days. The neighboring farmer looks to be selling his hayfield too. I am numb to it now as it’s not my town anymore.

I drove some more to find some good pictures to take. I waited for the sky to explode but it didn’t. It had its own magic going tonight.

You see, whenever the sun beams shine through the clouds towards the ground, my youngest usually says,

"Daddy, those are the souls of people going to heaven,"

If she doesn’t say it aloud, I’ll watch her and the way she looks. If she is thinking it, she will just turn to me and smile.

Tonight was different. The sun was low to the horizon so the gaps in the clouds guided the fingers of light across the sky, straight overhead. At one point there was a prism in one of the pockets that gave off the colors of a rainbow. If she had seen it, my youngest might have said "those are the souls from heaven coming down just far enough to watch over us."

It only seems fitting that I drove past my parent’s old house earlier tonight.

It’s was the wild kingdom out there tonight. There was a cottontail hopping around in the yard, five deer grazing down by the creek, a chorus of peepers singing their hearts out from the swampy wood and birds everywhere. I stopped down to the lake. It was dead calm and there were bullheads splashing in the creek as they made their way upstream to spawn.

I spotted a big snapping turtle staring at me a few feet from shore. It was the same size as the one I rescued from the road last spring. I am hoping it was him and he was letting me know that he was OK. Maybe he was checking on me……An old turtle to remind me of where I have been.