My family is full of lies. That’s not some bold, angsty statement. It’s a simple fact. For various reason — pride, exile, faulty memory, simple exaggeration, and maybe a penchant for telling tall tales — my family history has been muddled and mutated to the point where the facts I find in the record books are so fully disconnected with what I know and have always known to be “truth” that even the simple question of my earliest family memory is taboo and fraught with faulty narratives that I can no longer trust.

So I will recount a story — a myth retold to me a hundred times of an event that took place on a car ride I was in. I was there and can at least halfway vouch that it actually happened. But whether or not it’s fact wholehearted, I still can’t say, because, in reality it’s an event I don’t remember and some of its significance is lost on me. I can only guess at the whys and this is the story of my guesswork.The impact its had on my father has been so monumental that he’s been a spinning record stuck in a rut ever since.

The Owl in the Headlights

We were driving back from Tulsa late at night and if I remember anything it’s the ink black sky with pinpricks of light escaping like moths from a sweater. There are many things you can say about Oklahoma and most are disparaging, but the night sky is one of the greatest wonders of the world. Especially as seen by a four year old girl half in and out of sleep, leaning her forehead against the cool rear window of a 1984 Jeep Wagoneer.

The stop was jarring. I remember hitting my head on the back of the passenger seat. My brother James had wedged himself in the crevasse between the back seat and the front and he teetered back and forth, the divot cushioning him like a womb. He was snoring again within three breaths.

There was an owl in the road. A great big brown barn owl. My father stepped out of his seat and walked outside. The owl stared back at him, into the headlights, like an alien being investigated by local police, unable to discern it’s surroundings, but unafraid of what lay beneath the light. My dad continued walking towards the bird as my mother slept silently in the front seat. The fighting hadn’t quite started between them, but it was only a matter of time. Sometimes I think whatever truth he found this day contributed to what eventually happened between them, like the wings of a butterfly in China. But with that logic, everything led to their inevitable demise. It was written since birth.

I watched my father approach from the backseat. Sole witness to a shifting soul. He came within a foot of the apparition and leaned down to it. Crouched down and stared into its black pearls. A full moment passed. Then the owl simply spread it’s wings and lifted itself up, defying gravity as it had defied nature and fear. It’s wings were like the cupped hands of a swimmer, pulling itself higher and higher, breaking through a surface we can’t see, just as fish can’t see past a the underbelly of a boat.

My father came back into the car, out of breath with tears in his eyes. He had been touched. Later he would tell me that this moment, July 25th, 1986 at 11:15 pm, was the moment he discovered his life’s mission.

Years later, and many times, he’s told me that the owl told him to open an institute. A place where the great leaders of the world would come to him and heal the world. Solve hunger, and greed and fear. And he would be the hero. That love would be restored and understanding prevail. That good would prevail. That he would be the savior.

I don’t think this is what the owl meant, dad. I think you have misinterpreted his statement. Or maybe the moment has been muddled with words and pride and mortal ambition. I think the owl was simply saying that if you let go of fear you can grab hold of the air and have it pull you up up up, above greed and hunger and fear. I don’t think it was telling you how to solve the great problems of the world. It was showing you how to solve the great problems of your heart.