Bergfors Family Forces

       It was a long and hard day. Get up in the dark, make breakfast for half of the family, drag the twins to school, sit through five classes by yourself, make sure the twins got to after-school classes, do a week's worth of grocery shopping, check that the mid-boys cope with warming up their lunch, wash the floors at home, cut some wood for the stove, run back to school to retrieve the twins, search all over the school and schoolyard for them, drag them home past ice hills and swing sets, run to meet friends and test a new self-made sled model, get home after dinner time, discuss routine plans for tomorrow with Mom, realise that a history report should be done for tomorrow… Jonne could barely hold his eyelids open and his head above the notes when the twins, who should be sleeping already, squeaked and rumbled in their room next to his and tumbled downstairs. Well, Johannes ran back and banged on the doors of Jonne and Hannu. “There’s Fox Lights! Let’s go see it!” he shouted in a low voice. Oh, thank god, just aurora borealis, nothing serious. Unless… Jonne sprang up and ran downstairs just in time. Johanna left the mid-boys’ walled nook and was heading to Mom’s bedroom. He caught his sister and held her mouth shut. “Alright, I go with you. Don’t wake Mom.” “But she’d miss Fox Lights!” Johanna whispered furiously back as soon as he let her. “They’re pretty, she needs to see them!” Most of all, Jonne wanted to hit the hay and see nothing. Mom must be even more tired, she had even more duties every day. “Right now,” Jonne said at last, “she’s watching Fox Lights in her dream, and they are a hundred times more beautiful than yours. She’d be disappointed if you didn’t let her enjoy them. Now go and get dressed.” He slapped her below the back and heard her blowing a raspberry at him. Then she dashed to the hallway. Johannes scuttled after her, followed by ever-focused Jussi and disgustingly lively Jukka. Hannu didn’t come down, of course. Jonne envied him, but he was in charge of the twins, and mid-brothers needed an eye, so he grabbed his beanie and jacket, pulled on his felt boots, and tiptoed outside. Aurora, right. Winter skies glowed with eerie beauty; greenish curtains wavered in the quiet air, casting livid light on the snow, on round faces of the children, glittering in their eyes and in the house windows. If anyone asked Jonne now what he thought of aurora, he’d curse and say he hated it. At least, with all the fuss and night cold, he wasn’t falling asleep anymore.