Chapter V:
Of Kansas & Sunrises

Continued From
Chapter IV: Of Yachts & Suspicions

I left for Leawood on a Tuesday.  My roommate woke me up that morning.

“Hey.  You awake,” he asked. “You’ve gotta see this sunrise.”

By some stroke of luck, Zachary and I had worked our way into the East-facing room of the house.  The most noticeable feature of the room was, of course, the window.  The window was almost as large as the entire wall itself and gave us a panoramic view of the Cascade mountains.  In the foreground we could watch boaters on Lake Washington as they spent their summer days kayaking and sailing in and out of the channel.  And even closer than that, our neighbors across the street had a close-up view of every time Zachary or I got out of the shower.  Maybe a window like that is a sword that cuts both ways.

It took only a moment between Zachary’s statement and my actually seeing it to gain my bearings.  I had never seen anything like it.

My family had spent summers sailing on Lake Michigan, and I had always heard Uncle Dave repeat the mantra, red sky at night, sailors delight; red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.

It was almost prophetic.

As I lay there in my bed, not completely coherent, I fixed my eyes on the scene unfolding outside of our window.  The sky was blood red with thin veins of blue darting across the sky, in arcs, from horizon to horizon.  The amber glow just below the surface suggested that dawn was only moments away.  I took a mental photograph of the scene as I stared into the morning.

I had dated a girl once who took a lot of these types of photographs.  She would pause whatever she was doing,  look intently at her surroundings, take a deep breath, close her eyes and furrow her brow as if to indicate some deep thinking.  “Okay,” she would conclude, “I’ve got it.”  She told me that mental photos let us truly remember everything about a situation. Instead of limiting herself to what could be shown by paper and ink, she preferred to instead catalog her own experiences with mental photographs.  She was probably right.  It seems like there are a lot of settings in which a standard photograph just won’t do.

Considering this, I took a mental photo of my last morning in Seattle.  It was unclear when I’d see something like this again.  There was no question of if.  It was a question of when.

It was 40 seconds just as easily as it could have been two minutes.  I found myself staring off into the glowing distance for what might as well have been an hour.  For folks in Leawood, the dawn had broken hours ago.  For us in Seattle, we were still waiting for it.  We were still waiting for something that come long ago for others.

I didn’t know what time it was, but I reasoned that it had to be early because my alarm for six-o-clock had not yet gone off.  I rolled over in an attempt to fall back asleep.  It didn’t work.  I should have known there was no chance of such a thing happening.  As soon as I closed my eyes I began to wonder if the sky was changing at all without my seeing it.  Were there changes going on that I couldn’t see?

This was the kind of sunrise that makes a person believe in God.  And I was ignoring it.  I couldn’t help but think that things like this happen almost every day, whether or not we have eyes to see them.  The sun has risen every day of my life and I could count on two hands the number of times I’ve been awake to experience it.

Red sky at night, sailors delight; red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.

If Uncle Dave’s mantra was true, some poor adventurer was either in danger, or soon approaching it.

I looked at my phone to see what time I might need to wake up tomorrow to see something like this again.  4:41am the screen read.  I had been asleep for fewer than four hours and I’d be on I-90, headed for Kansas, in only a few more.

And that’s as long as it took me to realize that looking at the time to see when I’d need to wake up tomorrow was pointless.  I’d be in Kansas tomorrow.  The kind of Kansas that doesn’t have mountains.  The kind of Kansas that doesn’t have lakes.  The kind of Kansas that doesn’t have sunrises, for all I know.  It was almost too much to think about before five-o-clock in the morning.

Still staring at the glowing horizon, I said a prayer.  Please God, let there be sunrises in Kansas too.

I was reminded of Somewhere Out There from An American Tail, and the duet between Fievel and his sister Tanya.  Fievel, having no idea where his sister is, sings, “it helps to think we might be wishing on the same bright star.” Tanya offers a similar phrase; “it helps to think we might be sleeping underneath the same big sky.”

And somehow that song did it.

Were there changes going on in that sunrise that I could not see? Of course there were.  But there were changes going on all around me that I could not see.  And as soon I as arrived in Leawood I would need to confront the fact that of course things would change in Seattle, and I myself would not be able to see them.  Life would continue in Seattle just as it would in Leawood.  And every day, I could think about the fact that we’re both under the same sun, the same sky, and the same stars.  And somehow that was comforting.  Somehow that song did it.

I told Emily that distance never has the last word.  It’s one thing to say words, but it’s an altogether different thing to actually believe them.

The very first thing I did when I got to Kansas was set my alarm for 4:30am.

When I woke up the next morning I discovered that the sun rises in Kansas too.