Light dances across her pillow early in the morning, its warmth vying with the breeze to see which would waken her first. Lying in bed, she smiles as she reminisces about memories of light in her life.

So many glorious sunrises viewed from mountain trails as she watched the sun’s rays spreading gold slowly across the sky until the entire world danced with light.

Star light drawing her eyes upward as she walked the beach at night; that same starlight succumbing to moonlight reflecting off the ocean’s surface.

Street lights shining through the window of her Alaskan elementary school, a black sky creating the perfect backdrop for feathery flakes of snow falling to land on the frozen ground.

A lantern’s light beaming safety and love from the far side of a frozen pond as her family skated its perimeter under a sky lit by the Aurora Borealis.

A hundred tiny lights – reflections of one hundred candles held by friends surrounding the night-darkened lake while singing “Jubilate, Amen” at the end of summer camp.

Multi-colored Christmas lights shine from every year of her life, but she remembers especially Christmas celebrated in an unfinished room whose walls were covered with silver backed insulation. With the tree lit, the silver walls mirrored the lights ad infinitum, until the room was a glorious riot of color.

She sighs, smiling, as each of these memories warms her heart. The sun’s warmth touches her face as the breeze from the open window brings with it a scent of plum blossoms from the tree they had planted on their wedding day. Ten years later the plum tree stands as strong as their love, its scent always bringing with it shivers of happiness. The scent and warmth around her create a new picture only seen in her mind.

With sun, breeze, and memories to strengthen her, she rises to face the day, knowing these memories of light reflect as an inner glow in her life as she reaches out to others. Her family may now be her eyes, but she is their light.

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Susan Giles