The Question in the Sky

That morning I got an email from a friend up the road. It said “Quick look out the window! The horizon’s on fire!” I turned from my computer, and my early-rising friend’s urgent message was justified. What I saw was indeed what she had described.

The sky was ablaze with an orange light that shook my eyes and stopped my breath.

One wouldn’t think that such an orange would be found in a sky that was usually blue. But nature knows the nuances and mysteries of color that paint a sky with splendor and subtly that hold us in sway. The simple gauzy clouds that attended the fire like whiffs of smoke seemed more important because they were so slight. They hung in a line to the left of the brightest light, moving so slowly they appeared to be as still as I was, standing stunned staring out the window.

That’s where I saw it—the question mark. Unmistakably, it was a question mark shaped from the misty clouds drawn from the fiery light. The shape was large as if made by my father’s European hand with a squared top and a squat bottom above a squared dot. It stole my eyes like some ancient omen or modern horoscope. It was cloud writing. Was the sky talking to me? Was I talking to the sky?

I was mesmerized. Despite the bright glow, the color all around it, that mark held my attention until I watched the shape slowly change, fade back, and vanish. It resolved itself to become part of the larger sunrise. Gone was the question to join the sky.

Later that afternoon, the question that had been on my mind for days had resolved itself as well.

I’ve never been one to believe in omens or horoscopes.
I’ve never been one to believe in coincidences or freak accidents.
I believe in synchronicity, happenstance, and the beauty of a sunrise.

I wonder whether my father’s hand wrote that question mark in the sky?

—me strauss Letting me be