Seeing

I think it must have been February of last year or something.

We were in Haifa, on Mount Carmel. My grandparents took my parents and my cousins and me to see the sunset.

We passed behind backyards through a narrow path. Behind one abandoned building that had once been beautiful but had been taken by weeds and moss, tarnishing the characteristic Israeli white-painted walls. Through streets, to an empty lot. You could see the valley, and where the gravel ended there was a steep grassy drop.

All the while my younger cousins chattered about anything and everything. The sunset was beautiful over the city and the sea.

My middle cousin, aged seven, peered up at the sky. "I see God," he said. "Shira, I see God."

And though I fancy myself as one who doesn't, can't, or won't believe, he said it so innocently. So sweetly. I know him to be a trickster, but who am I to say what he did or didn't see?

Who knows, maybe there was something more in that sunset. I'm not one to tell.