If I was home in Pennsylvania, this is exactly the sort of night that I would revel in. I would take my dog out into the evening and simply soak up the deliciousness.
It’s a cool sort of evening, light breeze being the center show. It sweeps through my window in gusts, pulling back the curtains as if some living thing is there. It ripples over my bare arms and teases the wisps of my hair. I would say it is sweet with promise, but this breeze has no scent at all. If I close my eyes and imagine, I can smell the scent of childhood.
Just me in the night, tree limbs silhouetted against a periwinkle sky, the first stars peeking out, and no one to hear me as I murmur my prayers unhindered to the heavens. Fireflies winking from the creek bed, croaking toads in the pond, bats chirping as they dance overhead. The scent of fresh-mown grass, moist earth, honeysuckle growing wild.
It’s a beauty I remember when the breeze turns like this, and it leaves an odd pang in my heart.
Africa is a beautiful place, but it isn’t the same sort of beauty. The other is an easy beauty – the night was safety. Nights were for happy times – long walks in the twilight, a book by flashlight under the blanket, sleepovers and sweet dreams.
Nights in Africa mean danger. They are beautiful, certainly. Breath-taking sunsets, chirping cicadas in thorn bushes, the heavy scent of cycad after it rains, so many stars as if someone broke open a jar. But night means darkness, and darkness brings evil. We try to be smart and stay where it is safe once darkness falls.
This is why this breeze tonight – so welcome, so soothing – is also so bittersweet, bringing up memories and hopes and limitations and dreams all together.
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