"Postcard of a whale atop the canopy"

Ethan, the best photographer (and friend) I know,

Gawking up at the rigid stained glass windows of Sewanee’s All Saints’ Chapel, I realize I’ve squandered the beauty in looking up. When I was 8, I would sometimes put down my chopsticks during dinner and stare out the window up into the canopy of the evergreens and oaks lining the fence at the edge of my backyard. My family would joke to each other that I was acting stupid again, but they didn’t understand. As the sun set, the light would peek through in between the leaves, and then the trees would become a painting, amber splattered across emerald. Sometimes the light passing through the leaves would look like that robin I told you I saved in 1st grade, or like the baby deer I told you that my dad saved when I was 8 and which, according to my dad, occasionally visits us still. But most of the time I saw a whale. A whale, high up in the treeline, rolling and twirling with the breeze. If I strain my eyes now, sometimes I can still make out the whale, twirling up high in the chapel’s canopy of stained glass windows. But then it vanishes, no matter how long I stare up.

In the middle of the chapel, an old man, unblinking, gazes at one of the stained glass windows, his mouth slightly ajar. The tip of his tongue rests contemplatively on the edge of his lower lip, dry as if he hasn’t licked his lips in a while. I wonder, Does he see the whale?

That’s how I want to be when I’m his age. Dark-blue cardigan, swamp-green khakis, almond-brown loafers and all, I want to still be able to look up, to forget to lick my lips and to retract my tongue. I want to be able to watch a whale atop the canopy and not blink as it swims through the light and puddles of rich, stained glass color, about to crash out of the window and engulf me, or snuggle me.

Ethan, without your reminders to look up, I would’ve spent my time entombed in my notebooks and phone screen while the 2024 near-full solar eclipse and aurora borealis flitted over our school through the Massachusetts sky. So, please, teach me the beauty of the world above, alright?

Your new, humble student in looking up,

Chris