The Midnight Sun

The whole world feels hushed and still as we stand together on the pier and watch the sun sink towards the horizon. We’ve come all this way just for this moment, no more than a few seconds, maybe a minute. The sun will slip beneath the sea and then it will rise again, phoenix-like, to shine benevolently once more.

It was my idea to come to Hammerfest, the northern most city in Norway, to see the midnight sun. I wish I could say that Tim had a keen interest in Norway, or astronomy, something that had him looking forward to this trip with boyish excitement, but it’s nothing like that. There was a three-nights-for-two deal in the newspaper, and I took it, and Tim, with grim determination.

Tim stands next to me, lanky and bored, fourteen years old and stubbornly indifferent to the spectacle we’ve come to see. I want this trip to be important and special, which I am pragmatic enough to realise means it most assuredly won’t be. Still, I’ve kept up the cheerful chatter on the two flights to get here, enthused about our rather bare hotel room, decorated in sparse Scandinavian style, and thought I might get at least a smile when we stumbled upon a stray reindeer in the town square, munching grass and looking as bored as Tim.

None of it is working. This is my last chance, my prayer for a miracle. We came for this, of course, for the moment when the sun dips below the horizon before rising once more.

Tim has already informed me, in a very matter-of-fact way, that since it’s the end of July we’ll actually have a few minutes of darkness, and so this isn’t really the midnight sun. We’ve missed the best bit, and hence the three-nights-for-two deal. I smile and chuckle as if he is saying something amusing rather than rude. I don’t know how to deal with this lonely man-child who looks at me like he hates me, but sometimes also with a quiet desperation. I want to reach him, but I am afraid he no longer wants to be reached.

We stand there on the pier and silently watch the sun sink lower. The sky is darkening to twilight, streaks of magenta and violent shimmering on the surface of the sea. Night is coming, no matter how short it will be.

“Beautiful, isn’t it,” I remark, inanely, and Tim does not reply. I feel like shaking him. Why must you be like this? I want to ask. It wasn’t always this way between us.

Once Tim used to slip his hand into mine and skip next to me on the way home from school, tripping over his words as he told me all about his day. Once he used to give me sudden hugs as I was making dinner, smiling at me from underneath his boyish fringe. An acrimonious divorce put paid to all that. In the two years since Doug has left, Tim has almost stopped speaking to me altogether. He blames me for his father’s absence, and I can almost understand it. He needs someone to blame, and Doug isn’t here. And maybe it was my fault, at least partially. Surely I must take some blame for the breakdown of my marriage. Yet Tim’s rejection still devastates me. It’s been two years since Doug left, but it feels like forever. It feels like a very long night.

The sun sinks lower. We are alone on the pier; most people take the coach trips to Nordkapp or Fursøl to see this moment, or they ignore it because they’re too busy having fun, kayaking or golfing at some ridiculous hour, in this land where the sun—almost—never sets. I feel a wave of fatigue crash over me; it’s after midnight, and we got up at five a.m. to catch our flight. But I’m more tired than a long day warrants; I’m bone-weary, soul-deep tired of this struggle with my son.

I close my eyes, form a soundless prayer. Please. Something. It’s all I can manage. I don’t want to endure years more of Tim’s angry silence, the confused misery I see in his eyes. I tried talking to him, telling him all the right things, that it wasn’t his fault, that we were still a family. Who writes those parenting manuals, I asked my best friend Christine, some childless idiot? Because the right things don’t work. The right things are wrong.

I fix my eyes on the horizon. The sun has finished its graceful descent, and for a second the sea shimmers with a thousand golden lights. Then, darkness. We wait, the night soft and dusky all around us, hushed like a breath held in expectation. Neither of us speak, and in that moment I think we are silent by agreement, by sweet complicity, and I believe in the miracle. The night is over.

Then the sun rises, creeping over the horizon like a baby playing pee-bo and the sky lightens once more. Tim turns to me, and I feel an incredulous smile spread across my face as I wait for him to speak, for the miracle that will draw us together once more.

“That’s it?” he says and his studied derision feels like a slap in my face, a stab to my soul. I struggle to hide my disappointment.

“I thought it was pretty incredible,” I say, mildly, so mildly, even though tears thicken my throat. I wanted a miracle, stupidly perhaps, and I didn’t get one.

Tim just shrugs and starts walking down the pier. I follow, watching as the sky streaks with dawn light and the town around us shimmers, the newly minted sun gilding the quaint wooden buildings in gold. Tim shoves his hands in his pockets. He only half-glances back at me as he asks in a bored voice,

“What are we going to do now?”

Go to bed, I almost say. I’m exhausted, and despite the sunlight it’s still night-time. But then I stop, and I see the miracle. It’s morning. That’s where the wonder lies, the fact that morning always comes, no matter how long the night is or the sun hides its face. Morning comes. You simply have to wait for it.

“Well,” I say, lightly, so lightly, “we could have some breakfast. I fancy the full fry-up, don’t you?”

He looked incredulous, but just a tiny bit intrigued. “At midnight?”

“Half past, actually. And why not? It’s morning.”

Tim shrugs, and I take it for a yes. In silence we walk to a café near the pier that is open, despite the hour, and serves the kind of English breakfast we’ve both decided we wanted. I’m not really hungry, but I order eggs and bacon and coffee because it seems right.

It’s morning, after all, even if it doesn’t feel like it. Even if I didn’t find the miracle I was looking for. It’s still morning. There might not be a breakthrough moment that draws Tim and me back together, the kind of glorious revelation I was craving. But we’re here, together, eating, and I trust in this small victory. I trust that it is morning for us. As Tim sits across from me and begins to eat, I feel the first healing rays of light touch my face.