Return of the Night Owl

Men had landed on the moon in July of 1969, but my days that year had mostly been about packing and getting ready for school in September. Moving meant leaving what was familiar. The end of August was only about my entire personal reality changing. When you are nine years old, moving from the only house you have ever lived in is all-encompassing, and even men on the moon didn't seem like more than a small detail of my life.

We moved from a row home in the suburbs to a big house out in the country in August. It was a long drive to get to anything I was used to. The house was new, but my family and I were the second to live in it. Two elderly sisters had built it on what used to be a farm. They both became ill while the house was being built, and they both passed away two years earlier. That detail was enough to spark the imaginations of three children.

The house was built on two acres with farm fields on two sides & woods behind it and a creek running through it. My siblings and I were busy exploring and staking out territory. We had set up our rooms, stashed our belongings, and were becoming accustomed to life in the new place, and the newness of it all was fading.

Being born near a city, I had never spent more than a weekend anywhere rural. The first time I saw a starry sky I was fascinated. The first weekend in our new home was about exploration, inside and out. Evenings were spent lying on my back with my younger brother and sister in the grass, outside our new house, looking up at the sky and feeling insignificant. Everything in the sky stirred wonder and awe. Over the first few weeks, my siblings and I had seen things beyond our experience, and some seemed more peculiar than others.

It was nearly Halloween, and mid-October, and becoming cooler early. My sister noticed a light just above the horizon that didn't seem like the rest. It seemed to move slightly, and change color, but it was just at the edge of my vision and I told myself I was just tired and it was time to go in. I mentioned it to my father, but he barely acknowledged me. My assumption was it was not something adults thought important. I didn't mention it again.

After the next month in our new house, we had all settled into our routines during the day, and going to bed at night. Our explorations became less about what was outside, and more about the inside of the house. The house had two full bathrooms, one on the first floor and one on the second nearest the bedrooms. I shared a room with my brother and, being the older of the two of us, it was my job to make sure he got ready for bed. It was a school night, in the third week of November, and already dark out by the time we had both taken our baths. My sister took her turn in the bathroom. My brother and I were getting into bed and had just turned the light off when we heard my sister scream. My brother and I shot out of our room, but my parents beat us to the bathroom door. As I pushed alongside my father, a huge barn owl sat perched on the windowsill just looking in at us. It must have been attracted to the light coming from inside. The thing was huge, and it seemed to me to be the size of a small child. Its body filled the entire window. Huge black eyes seemed to look into me. My sister was hysterical, screaming at the top of her lungs, but the rest of us just stood stunned, staring at it on the sill.

I have no memory of how long we all stood there. I have no memory of the rest of the night. I'm sure my sister eventually stopped screaming, and we all found our beds, but none of that has stuck with me. The only thing I can recall from that evening is staring into the eyes of what seemed like nature itself, and yet something more, perched on our bathroom windowsill.

Nothing at any point in my childhood seems out of place, but when I think back to staring at that owl I'm reminded of the odd lights we saw weeks earlier while gazing at the sky. For years I've had flashes of memory of that owl starring at me, and every time something in me is reminded of lying in the grass watching a starry sky and seeing something bob back and forth that didn't behave like anything I'd ever seen in the sky.

All childhoods end, and that summer in 1969 changed mine in ways I still think about. To this day, the simple idea of an owl makes me expect to hear from someone I can't quite place, and when that crosses my mind I'm prompted to find the open sky somewhere outside. I look up expecting a message, and to see something I can't explain. Every time I see an owl or hear the word, something in me expects the return of a messenger. Each time I expect something awesome to stare into my soul. Each time I expect the return of the night owl. Each time I consider the year human beings first left Earth I think of owls and stars and a wonder that's never left me.