I was up late tonight waiting for my son, Chris, to get back from an out of town football game. The wind blowing through the open window caught my attention. The breeze was cool and crisp. It reminded me of a time years ago when I had just returned to Nebraska, having spent the summer with my mom in Texas.
It was the summer of 1973 and I was staying at my Grandparents Johnson’s farm in Harvard, Nebraska until I could find an apartment to move into and ready myself for my first semester of college. It was mid-June so summer hadn’t killed the cool evening nights yet. As I lay in one of my grandma’s feather beds, I listened to the breeze blow through the second story Victorian-style windows. The air had the freshness that fills your head to give you that almost giddy feeling: just like after waking up from a short nap. The only sound I could hear was the wind blowing through the screen, gently flowing the cotton curtains back and forth in rhythm with the breath of the night air.
I got up and looked out the window. There were no man made lights. Just the reflection of the cosmos on a summer night carrying just a hint of a storm brewing from the west. The moon cast a lunar shadow on the cornfields and the outbuildings. It was one of those moments when time almost stopped. I thought about the future and what it might hold. I realized that night that no matter where I went or what I did, there would always be an attachment to these Nebraska summer nights. The land fills your soul and never leaves you. A farm makes no pretenses, it is the epitome of a life cycle: birth, life and death.
For now, I’m going to savor that crisp night air and listen for that distant sound of the thunder as the wind wraps itself around me and whispers the secret of its approach in my ear and savor a fond memory.