Aliens

A whiteout from the stratosphere has buried the house in silence, a void no one will be escaping. Security lights blink on five brothers here before dawn to save my parents, the oldest boy shivering in a windbreaker and slick shoes, the ten-year-old with socks for gloves.

They might be miserable with a dad who gave them snow shovels for Christmas and now insists they enter glacial dark, but they are intergalactic seekers, the driveway endless distance they must plow through. They radio each other from their small craft.

I offer hot chocolate, a friendly port, but they say they must return to the mother ship and sleep two more hours to keep enemy lasers from piercing their brains and thinking their thoughts.

Their quest: saving the galaxy. Light years from now they will look back at the blue planet, that wobbly little star, recall explosions, drifts, blasts through ice chunks, powder, glaze, proud they helped earthlings risk kindness, that they cleared a path.