I used to be able to go out at night to watch the ISS cross our sky, to track the planets, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, sometimes even Mercury. The Moon is always glorious, dare I say heavenly? I do not know how many times I have found and then forgotten various constellations. Two I can never forget are Orion and Sirius, defining between them the winter sky. Scorpius and Sagittarius are memorable too, moving across the southern shore; while frequently overhead I could find fierce Leo and my sign, Gemini the twins. The rest of the Zodiac tends to disappear into the fog of my memory, no matter how many times I have looked them up or found them above me. Two more come out of that fog, Auriga and Cassiopeia, with her W written large in the northeastern sky, perhaps, though not part of the Zodiac.
The Milky Way is always overhead one way or another with the northern cross to shine down a divine blessing, again, perhaps. If I were a poet I would turn starlight into intoxicating verse, light years into seconds, seconds into all the time I might have left. I love the nighttime stars with its constellations and asterisms, Ursa Major and the Big Dipper, and always end with shooting down Polaris, the North Star, to guide me safely home, now with tears in my eyes.
As l made for what passes now as “a mad dash” for the hall bathroom, I remembered Fairway Drive as it was when we, more or less, first arrived. There were no trees across the street from our house and we could see the entire ridge in the distance. For several years I could treat the ridge as my personal Stonehenge and watch the sun move (rise) from the distant south in winter through the seasons to the distant north in summer. I of course made charts, using the dips in the ridge line to keep track of place and date. The next year I could check for consistency and accuracy, though for a few years the project made me an early riser.
The most delightful memory of this project though was the year I talked my eldest child, John-David, into using the alignment of the planets, one of those somewhat rare celestial events that are (I think) delightful to behold: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. I remember rousing him one “morning” at 4 a.m. to behold the sky; I suspect it was winter but I have no clear recollection of the time of year, though it would have been the eighties. We kept records and made a large cardboard chart of the phenomenon. I was so very proud of him for doing it, mostly “for my sake,” I suppose, but bless him anyway and I will never forget that even though it was 4 a.m., he didn’t grumble but followed me into the vision. To this day he will call to remind us of certain celestial events that in our dotage we may have missed or to ask about certain bright stars or planets that he didn’t quite recognize. Like most things we dearly love the sky and stars, sun and moon, planets and constellations are a gift. All one has to do to accept the gift is to look up at night.
During the day, the clouds are a frequent gift bestowed.
That reminds me, in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, one of her early chapters begins with a marvelous contrast between what is happening overhead in the night sky and what is happening in the City underneath that sky that people are totally ignoring. The contrast is, I think, unforgettable.
How many suns does it take for Sirius
To brighten the long corridors of space?
