His World

I'd stayed up late being silly the night before (some people dress up for Halloween and look gorgeous; I dress up and I am still, unfortunately, me, although, quite fortunately, I have my Halloween-glam friends who stand by and beguile, who also (miraculously) dance with me, even that friend who spends part of the night telling me how gorgeous all the other women are, detail by detail, he explains, they are so gorgeous, they have, he says, an aura, and that's right, these friends, they have an aura), and then I never did fall asleep. So that by the time we started driving through the endless rain to see that son I sorely miss, I was in a strange gray place, one easily pierced by the sight of cliff rock and red ivy on the dark bark of trees.

Some of the valleys were fog. Some of the valleys caught lost bits of sun, then shucked them off, before they warmed me.

When it wasn't outright pouring, we walked the campus with our son. "Hope he's able to show you a few surprises/discoveries," my friend Jay had written, and our son did more than that. He stole, with us, inside academic buildings and showed us where he sat in class. He took us upstairs to the quiet retreat where he gets his reading done. He walked us behind the campus, then out of it, and told us landmark stories. He said over and over how much he loved his school, then said, as many times, how glad he was that we had come.

What is it, I thought, what is it about him?

His happiness. His calm. His aura.