Louise Sutherland-Hoyt

Meaning From Ashes

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I have just come home from Florida—salt in my hair, sunlight still clinging to my shoulders, laughter from crowded tables echoing somewhere just behind me.

Time away has a way of burnishing memory. It polishes what matters and lets the rest fall off like sand.

One afternoon we wandered through the Kennedy Space Center, and something in me caught the light. Beneath the towering rockets—white, improbable, almost cathedral-like—I felt the old luster of childhood awe. I remembered the first seven astronauts, the quiet steadiness of the NASA emblem stitched over a beating heart. Men who climbed into the unknown when the sky was still a question mark.

I remember watching those launches as a girl—the living room hushed, the grainy broadcast flickering like a sacred vigil. The world felt wide then. Dangerous and wide. And brave.

Standing there decades later, older now, I felt the shimmer of that earlier self. Not nostalgia exactly. More like recognition. The same human hunger to go—outward, yes—but also inward. To explore the uncharted regions of courage, loss, love, and becoming.

Family and friends filled these days with warmth. Stories overlapped. Glasses clinked. We lingered longer than necessary. The ordinary became luminous simply because we were paying attention.

And now I am home again. Back to the quiet Nevada light. Early Spring and daffodils pushing through cold, old dirt. Back to the desk, the page, the steady practice of shaping meaning from memory. Aging has given me this gift: less urgency, more clarity. Less grasping, more gratitude. The freedom to choose my work with intention and to call it blessing.

The rockets reach for the heavens. We reach for one another. Both are acts of faith.

I return thankful—hand on heart—for the luster of what has been and the simple grace of what is still unfolding.