Sometimes, at night, I hear an owl. I only hear it—I’ve never seen it. Álvaro never hears it, but he always sees it, hidden in a shed of an abandoned house very close to where we live. Sometimes, when he gets home after dark, he says: I saw it again! I wonder to myself whether nature has some deep message meant only for him.
Yesterday, already in my pajamas, he and the kids decided to go out and look for it. I stayed home, perhaps out of laziness, or because of the cold, or because I don’t feel the need to see everything I hear—some things exist without us being able to see them, and trusting in what is invisible is an act of rebellion.
After a while, as I was folding a couple of sweaters, putting away some books and a few mismatched socks, I suddenly heard someone fling the front door open with overwhelming force. And I knew, without seeing him—by the way he took off his shoes, by the way he ran up the stairs—that it was my middle son and that they had seen it. I saw it in his eyes. I saw the owl.
When he shouted: Mom! We saw it! his eyes were the glow of excitement, of anticipation, of desire, of the unexpected, of his bond with his father. I saw the owl in his eyes just as you can see the deep sea when you lean into someone’s heart.
And today it’s cold, and I can feel the wind though I cannot see it. Today the fireplace burns with the wood I stacked a few days ago. Today I’m thinking about whether we see what we look for, or whether we look for what we long to see—whether we can see through another’s eyes. And I search through some photos I took before the cold arrived. Perhaps today someone needs the warmth of summer, even if the cold seeps into our bones and we cannot see it.
All photos were taken with an OM System OM-3.
@omsystem.generation
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