lamp
The last time you sneaked out of the house after midnight, you were twelve years old. From your bedroom window above the garage, you saw your brother’s VW parked beneath the lamplight and, ever-curious, just had to get a closer look. So you crept downstairs, avoiding the creakiest floorboards, and felt your way through the living room to the front door, leaving the brightest lamp darkened so as not to wake the folks. And sure enough, there was your brother, fumbling around in the semi-dark with Sue Ellen Smothers, the object of his lust in eleventh grade.
Years later, you’re living in the house you grew up in, with a family of your own, and when your son doesn’t return from a date by curfew, you creep downstairs, avoiding the same creaky floorboards, but when you get to the living room, you turn the lamp on to avoid bumping into the furniture and waking your wife. Out the front door and down the walk, and there he is: Your sixteen year-old boy-man, parked in the very same spot where your brother groped his girlfriends way back when.
The roaming arms and twisted heads in the shadowy light make you feel like a voyeur, so you shake your head and turn to the house and are amazed by what you see. More than a house, this is a home, with a lamplight in the window, your wife asleep in your bed upstairs, and a lilac tree fingering the night like a rosary. And so you say a little prayer, more praise than petition: I am a lucky man.
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