Billowy Dragons

“Dragons.”

He knew where they were. He was looking right at them. His wife of many years smiled at him, puzzled. If she did not understand his answer, then that was his fault, but all during the time he had been watching the sky, they had been at play right in front of him.

This year’s summer storms had awakened the old, unconscious habit. He wouldn’t be aware that the cloudbanks that preceded the thunderstorms were drawing his eye upward until something would break the trance and bring him crashing back to earth. Like the time driving home from work, when he ran up too close to the car in front of him and his heart leaped into his throat as he slammed on the brakes. Or the time when doing his weekend yard work, he had been standing in place, hopefully watching the sky with the lawn mower running, and his wife had called to him.

“What are you looking at?”

“Nothing.”

His answer had been truthful. He had seen nothing but clouds in the great banks of clouds, but somewhere buried in his subconscious was the knowledge of the special thing he was looking for. His wife’s question had cleared his mental block enough to allow him to put form to the vague longing.

Dragons had billowed into his life before he had been old enough to have a firm grasp on time and so to him it had seemed as though they had always been there. When he was a child, they would always blow in well in advance of the summer storm clouds, running riot above the gray and under the blue in the towering banks of white. There were dragons winged and without wings, seahorse dragons and serpent dragons and dinosaur dragons. There were dragon heads belching white cloud flames or with chimney smoke drifting lazily up from their nostrils. Sometimes the dragons would sail by in a puffy-white parade and sometimes they would charge head-on, with fangs bared or smiling with faces as innocent as angels. Dragons would hatch one claw at a time or one clawless leg at a time only to dissipate or be absorbed by a bigger dragon. It was all in fun. Dragons playing in the sky just for him. Eventually the storm would come in and the sky would get too dark and too heavy for dragons, but he would have seen enough by then and he could always be certain of them coming again.

Until at some point, at their whim, with no regard for all the years in which he had been their appreciative audience, they had stopped coming. He didn’t know exactly how many seasons had passed before he had become aware of their absence. There had been that one time in college when he had thrown himself onto his back on a grassy mall during a moonlight night and they had come under the black and over the black in the towering banks of white, but that was the last time he could remember having seen them. By then he had become serious about the girl who would become his wife of many years and he had to be mindful of the future. He had not seen dragons for the rest of that great, long, blank stretch of middle life except for an occasional tug that always resulted in a vague feeling of loss. The awareness would come to him at odd moments. Like the time he had been in a meeting on the sixteenth floor and the clouds had come rolling in and transfixed him as he looked out of the conference room window … but the boss had demanded that he pay attention to the important numbers on the sheets of paper before him.

There had been many years of important numbers and meetings and presentations, but they were coming to an end for him. Younger Turks had taken up the charge. He was one of the comfortable old heads now. And with his wife’s question, the image of the thing that he had always missed finally solidified in his mind. Even conceding that while he and his wife of many years had been raising their son and paying the mortgage, he may have been too occupied to worry about the whereabouts of missing dragons, it was not fair that they had thrown him away. And now that the mortgage was paid off and the boy was grown and gone to his own house, his own wife, and his own mortgage, he wanted them back. Driving home, looking over the hood ornament of his car, he would brood. He had never forgotten them, not really. It was unfair of them to act as though he had forgotten them.

For the rest of the storm season, he had watched diligently until, for that year, the hot, muggy, violent weather played out and the dry, calm weather returned. In the evenings, he and his wife would sit on their patio watching the sunset and he would ask her if the boy had called. Mostly he hadn’t, but the question always made her smile. One evening, her smile took him back to the first time he had seen her smile. They had been in college then and her features had been sharp; her skin, tight and wrinkle free. Over the years while they had been raising their son, paying off the mortgage, and growing old together, her features had grown soft and fleshy and her hair was salted with gray. The years of their lives together were duly recorded in her wrinkles, but she was still pleasing to his eye. How long had he been unaware? He couldn’t remember the last time he had looked at her; really looked at her, and now, suddenly he couldn’t take his eyes off her. The form and substance of all that he thought had slipped away was right there in front of him, patient and playful. Too late?

Perhaps not.

She caught him staring. “What are you looking at?”

“Dragons.”