Sunrise Hill

Lisse always left before sunrise; it was her own tradition, her personal vigil. Pa had promised to watch the sunrise with her when he came back. That was twelve years ago. Every day she’d come up here, just to be alone, to remember him…

This time, she had a companion.

“Won’t you wait with me Lisse?” Ma said, sitting on an uncomfortable boulder. “It’s so lovely when the sun paints the valley green and brown, when the light catches the ripples on the lake and it glitters like a diamond. Pa always loved this valley. He’d want you to see it.”

Lisse bit her lip. She felt that she might betray Pa’s memory by breaking her tradition, but would Ma understand that? Would she realize how after all this time Lisse still felt so keenly her father’s absence?

Her mother looked away from the mountain hiding the dawn, its brightening halo of orange and green and yellow announcing that only a few minutes remained. She must have caught something in Lisse’s expression, because her face softened, eyes almost closing in a wrinkled, kind smile.

For perhaps the first time, she felt the full measure of her mother’s loss. Though Lisse had lost a father, Ma had lost her husband. She’d valiantly raised Lisse and her five siblings, but life had never been easy for them. And yet Ma had never complained. She just loved them all, enough for two parents, so they would always remember how much their Pa loved them.

Lisse felt enormous gratitude for this woman, grayed and worn out before her time, spending her whole self without her best friend to help so that her children could soar. She would stay, if Ma asked her, despite her tradition.

“Go home, dear. Fix up some breakfast. I’ll greet Pa and I’ll tell him you said hello.”

“Thank you, Ma,” Lisse said, hugging the old woman and hurrying down the hill.

As she reached the house, she looked back up to the hilltop. For a moment she swore she could see two silhouettes; they were holding hands, walking together into the sun-soaked sky. Then the most glorious dawn she’d ever seen burst before her eyes, as if the whole heaven had opened to let out its most vibrant colors, and both the figures were consumed in the brilliance. By the time the sun had fully risen, there were tears on her cheeks.

Ma never came home. After that day, Lisse stayed for every sunrise. They were beautiful, as beautiful as Pa had always said, as beautiful as her mother described them. She never felt alone again on that hilltop.