Meteor Memories
When I was six years old, my dad woke us up in the early, early morning hours, bundled us into the car, and drove us out to a place on the side of the highway going out of town. There my brother and my dad and I waited in line in the dark of lingering night for a chance to peer into a telescope and see one small white smudge against the black sky: Halley's Comet.
At the time, the excitement I felt had little to do with a once-in-a-lifetime stargazing event and a lot to do with the fun of doing something special and crazy with just Dad and John Caleb - and a whole lot to do with the steaming mugs of hot chocolate we shared at the Hot Biscuit afterwards. I'm pretty sure that when I told my classmates about my experience, I focused primarily on the Hot Biscuit, and I may have forgotten the comet altogether.
But as a grown-up, and as a parent, I know now that Dad gave us two immeasurable gifts that night: the chance to witness history, and the chance to do it with him.
It's no Halley's Comet, but the annual Perseids meteor shower was predicted to be visible and spectacular last night, and so I was determined to share it with Luke and Sarah - even if it meant getting up in the middle of the night to do so. Philip was in Austin for a meeting, and so I sent the kids to bed and told them to get to sleep early so that I could wake them up later to see the shooting stars. Luke had plenty of questions about these meteors (primary of which was, "Will any of them hit our house?"), some of which I could answer readily and others which were just as mysterious to me ("Why did a comet leave the rocks there?"). All our trips to the museum and planetarium paid off during this discussion because he could at least remember that the meteors he had seen there were not very large - not, say, as large as "the one that killed the dinosaurs" - and this clarification seemed to help put him more at ease about the prospect of a "big meteor shower." Understandably so.
I set my alarm for 11:30, thinking that we needed to be outside by midnight in order to see something but not lose all our sleeping hours (a certain toddler would be awake early as usual the next morning, and I am still solo-ing it, after all). In my old age, I don't fall asleep as easily as I used to, so I actually didn't expect to be asleep yet when the alarm went off, but naturally, this would be a night on which I managed to fall dead asleep with ease, and the alarm went through three snoozes before I managed to crawl out from under the covers.
But that was nothing compared to the kids - I thought for sure that when I went to get them, they'd hop right out of bed, but that was obviously foolishness. I feared that I would have to leave them after all when no amount of gentle shaking or talking in ears could rouse them even a little! I finally just scooped them each out of bed and set them down on their feet, stuffed their pillows under their arms, and led them like sleepwalkers down the stairs.
Sarah managed to perk up a bit but I'm not sure Luke was ever fully awake: as soon as I laid the blanket out on our side lawn, he collapsed on it and appeared to fall immediately back to sleep... Throughout the next 45 minutes, Sarah chattered on and on, but I had to check on Luke every ten minutes to make sure he was still with us.
But we didn't miss the meteors: Sarah and I spotted two almost the minute we settled down on the blanket, and they were definitely clear to see - unless, like Luke, you had your eyes closed. It was quiet for the next while, though, as we waited, and so there we were, staring up at the sky and talking softly about the universe and the stars and the fun of taking it all in. We tried to identify constellations (and I once again vowed to work harder to learn a few for times like these), and we talked about how the lights from the city and the neighbor's yards and the still-bright moon made it harder to see the stars. We tried not to smell the dog poop from the neighbor's yard so nearby, and I tried to ignore the feeling that the mosquitoes were surely eating me up. And then off to the right, another meteor streaked across the sky, and Luke blurted out, "I saw it!" and then, "Let's go in now."
And so we picked up our pillows and the blanket and put ourselves quietly and easily back to bed. I confess that even though I knew (and had explained to the kids) that a "meteor shower" is often more like a "slow meteor drip," it was still a little anticlimactic... But that was probably just because we didn't have any steaming mugs of hot chocolate waiting for us in the end. Maybe next time...
At the time, the excitement I felt had little to do with a once-in-a-lifetime stargazing event and a lot to do with the fun of doing something special and crazy with just Dad and John Caleb - and a whole lot to do with the steaming mugs of hot chocolate we shared at the Hot Biscuit afterwards. I'm pretty sure that when I told my classmates about my experience, I focused primarily on the Hot Biscuit, and I may have forgotten the comet altogether.
But as a grown-up, and as a parent, I know now that Dad gave us two immeasurable gifts that night: the chance to witness history, and the chance to do it with him.
It's no Halley's Comet, but the annual Perseids meteor shower was predicted to be visible and spectacular last night, and so I was determined to share it with Luke and Sarah - even if it meant getting up in the middle of the night to do so. Philip was in Austin for a meeting, and so I sent the kids to bed and told them to get to sleep early so that I could wake them up later to see the shooting stars. Luke had plenty of questions about these meteors (primary of which was, "Will any of them hit our house?"), some of which I could answer readily and others which were just as mysterious to me ("Why did a comet leave the rocks there?"). All our trips to the museum and planetarium paid off during this discussion because he could at least remember that the meteors he had seen there were not very large - not, say, as large as "the one that killed the dinosaurs" - and this clarification seemed to help put him more at ease about the prospect of a "big meteor shower." Understandably so.
I set my alarm for 11:30, thinking that we needed to be outside by midnight in order to see something but not lose all our sleeping hours (a certain toddler would be awake early as usual the next morning, and I am still solo-ing it, after all). In my old age, I don't fall asleep as easily as I used to, so I actually didn't expect to be asleep yet when the alarm went off, but naturally, this would be a night on which I managed to fall dead asleep with ease, and the alarm went through three snoozes before I managed to crawl out from under the covers.
But that was nothing compared to the kids - I thought for sure that when I went to get them, they'd hop right out of bed, but that was obviously foolishness. I feared that I would have to leave them after all when no amount of gentle shaking or talking in ears could rouse them even a little! I finally just scooped them each out of bed and set them down on their feet, stuffed their pillows under their arms, and led them like sleepwalkers down the stairs.
Sarah managed to perk up a bit but I'm not sure Luke was ever fully awake: as soon as I laid the blanket out on our side lawn, he collapsed on it and appeared to fall immediately back to sleep... Throughout the next 45 minutes, Sarah chattered on and on, but I had to check on Luke every ten minutes to make sure he was still with us.
But we didn't miss the meteors: Sarah and I spotted two almost the minute we settled down on the blanket, and they were definitely clear to see - unless, like Luke, you had your eyes closed. It was quiet for the next while, though, as we waited, and so there we were, staring up at the sky and talking softly about the universe and the stars and the fun of taking it all in. We tried to identify constellations (and I once again vowed to work harder to learn a few for times like these), and we talked about how the lights from the city and the neighbor's yards and the still-bright moon made it harder to see the stars. We tried not to smell the dog poop from the neighbor's yard so nearby, and I tried to ignore the feeling that the mosquitoes were surely eating me up. And then off to the right, another meteor streaked across the sky, and Luke blurted out, "I saw it!" and then, "Let's go in now."
And so we picked up our pillows and the blanket and put ourselves quietly and easily back to bed. I confess that even though I knew (and had explained to the kids) that a "meteor shower" is often more like a "slow meteor drip," it was still a little anticlimactic... But that was probably just because we didn't have any steaming mugs of hot chocolate waiting for us in the end. Maybe next time...
Comments
Post a Comment
Thanks for leaving a comment!