The Time We Saw the Northern Lights While Driving to New York

My dad would stay behind the wheel all night to save money on a motel and spend more time on vacation. He was used to driving because of his sales job. First, we’d visit relatives in the city, then Sag Harbor for my aunt and uncle.

And the sunny, salty Atlantic beaches, of course.

Well, there was that one time he let my older brother, the one with a license, switch places without pulling over, but that’s another story.

Anyway, I was asleep in the back, maybe crammed in the rear window ledge or the floor because I was the youngest, when suddenly everyone was talking. Their voices broke the peaceful silence of 2 a.m. on a highway in Indiana.

“Wake up, you have to see this,” a different brother said, tapping my shoulder.

I did. Normally, no one voluntarily included me. Like I said, I was the youngest.

“It’s the Northern Lights,” my father proclaimed, as if he’d arranged for them himself.

I sat up and turned my face to where the others were craning theirs.

The sky was swirling. Red waves undulated into pink, then up and down the spectrum. It was as if a mystic hand was squeezing a daytime rainbow into the night.

Due to the children’s books I was reading at that age, I kind of expected miraculous events. Not at that particular moment, however.

We watched until the car took us away from the spectacle. Eventually, the silence in the sedan went from reverence back to the comforting monotony of tires on pavement.

We didn’t speak of it until the truck stop restaurant at dawn. Back then, there was no internet to consult and inform, just our individual memories and our dad’s vague explanation.

I’ve searched the heavens for it since, but that’s my only aurora borealis sighting so far. I’ll keep looking, though, forever scanning the stars for miracles I still expect.