There is something magical about the night sky. Even more so in the cold crisp nights of winter. I have always had a special connection with the stars in the sky. I guess, in some way, all of us humans do. It has been a subject of fascination since the beginning of time. There is just something about looking up into the night sky, seeing stars, planets, and galaxies, that just moves us. It makes us feel so utterly insignificant but also wholly infinite at the same time.
I grew up in Massachusetts, in a
rural area, with low light pollution. I
was lucky enough to see shooting
stars just about every time I looked up
and wished for it. Even at a young age
I would look up and identify the Little
and Big Dippers, Orion’s Belt, and the
North Star. Later I would learn to find
Taurus with Mars at the top and Cassiopeia as well. (Shout out to the 2001 film Serendipity on that one) I’m not even sure when or how I learned most of this stuff. But I picked it all up somewhere along the way. When I was about eight years old my parents got divorced and I moved to Florida. In a time of uncertainty I looked up to the night sky again and found Orion’s Belt and it brought me comfort. Even when so much had changed, the sky stayed constant and calm. When I graduated high school, I was moving away again somewhere new and leaving all my friends. On a cold winter night I walked in the woods with a few close friends and a shooting star flashed through the sky, reminding me everything was changing but yet somehow, staying the same. When I relocated to South Carolina, on a particularly lonely night, I sat on the beach and asked the cosmos for a sign that everything would be all right, that I would be all right, and again as it had in years past, a flash from a shooting star shot across the sky and brightened my soul.
Many years, and a few kids later, I can’t even remember the last time I looked at the night sky, just gazed at it in wonder. I can’t remember the last shooting star I’ve seen. I honestly can’t even remember the last time I was out pass dark. But recently, I had a friend invite us on a hike in the evening to Max Patch, which is a high and flat mountain about an hour away from us. I was so excited and thought this was the perfect opportunity to get out in the dark again and stare at the stars and introduce this big wide world of stars to my kids. We would hike and watch the sunset and then get a peek at the night sky and talk about the stars and feel at peace and calm and loved and everything would be perfect. Then, true to the nature of winter, everyone got sick. So we had to postpone. I was disappointed. I was upset that we wouldn’t have the perfect way and time, that it wouldn’t be just so, just the way I pictured it. Special. Magical.
Life-changing. So I let it go and started to brainstorm other ways of studying the night sky this with my kids.
Then, one day, an early Christmas present was delivered. A trampoline. As we assembled the trampoline it got dark. The kids jumped their last few jumps then we finally got them in. After dinner, my two year old begged to go back out and jump. I repeatedly told him “no, its too cold, its too dark, its night time” and then, quite suddenly, sense struck! “What am I saying?! We should be out there! It’s night time, the sky is awake!” So I gathered jackets and flashlights and yelled to the kids, “Let’s go outside! Let’s go lay on the trampoline, I want to show you all something!” They followed behind me, (though my oldest was somewhat unsure) as I walked out into the yard and climbed the ladder onto the trampoline. We laid down and cuddled close and I said, “Look! Look at all the stars! Aren’t they so cool?!” I started to name off and point to a couple of the constellations I knew and could find. And within minutes, all three children climbed off the trampoline and ran inside.
Wow. My oldest and youngest were terrified of the dark and the sounds of the night, they saw nothing magical about it, and wanted to promptly return indoors where it was safe and warm. My two year old also wanted me to return indoors, which was made clear by his yelling “MOM!”, over and over again at the door. My middle son, had left the trampoline in such a hurry that I wasn’t even sure what he was thinking or feeling. As I headed back in, slightly downtrodden that none of my children were willing to lay and unlock the mysteries of the universe with me, my middle son came running back out asking “you done mom?” I explained that everyone was scared so we were going back in and he said, “Me not scared, me just have to go to the bathroom”.
Now, if any of you have more than one kid, you probably have a similar second born child who just thrives off the zest of life. These are the kids that want to suck all the marrow out of every moment and every experience that they can. These are the tree climbers, the risk-takers, the refuse to hear ‘no’ kids, the march to the beat of their own drum types, the independent, free spirited types, that just cannot get enough of adventure. I should have known this one wouldn’t have run scared. I was elated. My little fearless one. Let’s do this! The two of us climbed back on to the trampoline. We laid down and looked up at the stars. I shared with him all I could see, all that I knew. I asked him what he saw. He saw triangles, and colors, he found a blue star and named it “Blue Night Star”. I told him about all the shooting stars I had seen as a kid and told him I hoped we would see one too. We didn’t see one that night but we started something. We had the start of a memory, the beginning of a tradition, just a twinkle of magic. We vowed to go out every night and lay on the trampoline and look at the stars, and one day catch a shooting star.
It wasn’t the exact right setting or time.
We weren’t up on a big mountain away from the city lights. It was spontaneous and mundane. It was perfection. It wasn’t all my boys cuddled up with me sharing the experience. It was just the one who was the most interested and willing, and the one who needed the connection the most. That’s how it usually goes for me, the harder I try at something, the worse it usually fails, but when I’m not trying much at all, and I’m just partaking in the life around me, its when I see the most beauty and feel the most full. In those moments on that trampoline I saw a whole future. Me staring up at the stars with a teenager, then a grown man, then a husband, then a father, then as an old woman with her son. The night sky being a tender and intricate thread weaving through all his big moments, grounding him, connecting him to himself, connecting him to that little boy laying on the trampoline.
You never know where the magic will come from, you wont always be able to create the precise recipe for wonder at will, but I hope you can manage to see it and soak it in when it shows it’s elusive face. Seize the awe. Grab hold of the mystery. Step outside one night when all is quiet and take in the simple beauty of a clear night sky.
Leighan Romanesk, Guest Blogger
Leighan is a homeschooling mom of 3 boys who lives in East Tennessee. She loves to do all the outdoors things with her kids. The things she loves to do most without her kids are photography, reading, writing, and brunch.
