Every evening the Morstads gather at their back porch to watch the sky go dark.

And I watch them, every evening peeking from my bedroom window with my head leaning on the frame and the lights turned off so they won’t see inside.

The five of them share one blanket – a red and blue checkered one, the thick kind made of wool, I think. Even in the summer, when it's too warm to step outside much less be close to someone, they are there, nestled in that same blanket. Even when it rains, they find themselves standing in it, soaking in it, as if they don't feel it at all. They never speak. They hardly blink, eyes staring upwards, fixated on their respective spots in the vast, color-changing sky. The light, and the way it’s cast, as if sent by gods, as if they were gods themselves, paragons of what light itself is supposed to be.

The air is still yellow with sunlight when they file out the house. Always the same: father to youngest son, one after the next with their heads down and always dressed in white. They stay until the stars show themselves, then file back inside – always the same: father to youngest son.

Aksel, proud and demure, the remnants of a life far away from this one, a great businessman who took all his money and his wife and left Norway to start a family on this coast of the United States. He comes out first, red-and-blue blanket tucked in hand in contrast to his white slacks and shoes, and Anne is next. The way he wraps his arm around her is loving. Strong. Protective, yet trusting. He closes his eyes as he kisses her, and I see her lean in; it is submissive but in an honorable way. She’s dependent on him, I see that, but still, above all, she is strong-willed. She is the bonds that hold her family together. He, merely a base for her pillar to stand upon.

Then comes Saxa, hair draping down her shoulders, framing her face as if intentionally calling your eyes to draw upon it. She joins her mother, who places the family blanket over her shoulders. She threads her hand through gently to rest of the small of her mother’s back. She accepts a kiss from her mother, then positions the blanket around the shoulder of her arriving sister.

The routine repeats once again (for Emma) and then once more (for Kristoffer), and then, there they stand, nestled together with arms looped around the shoulders and backs of who is beside the next, their pack, eyeing the sky until their eyes can’t be seen anymore. The shadows of their faces move as the sun sets. Dare I say there are nights when they smile? Or is this simply a trick of the light?

Sometimes I wonder how present they are in these moments. If I wave, would they notice me? Would I disturb their steady concentration? It is a fantasy of mine, in a way. I don’t have the power to liquefy stone, nor do I pretend to, but if I did! How would the stone feel? Would it hate me? Or, thank me? for freeing it from those frozen bonds?

Is it strange that sometimes I wish to join them? That sometimes I feel outside of my body, that I’m staring down at a family that is my own, that I’m simply a soul separated from where I am supposed to be. You could never tell just watching them silently stand and stare each night, but in the morning, screams of joy and the bang of pots echo from their open windows to mine. And each morning, as I hear these things from the insufferable comfort of my own room, I’ll think “I know you. I’d give anything for you to know me.”