the sky is bright with stars

I'd never seen a shooting star before. Not from lack of effort -- I remember going out and lying on our lawn last year for a few minutes, but I wasn't looking when one came along and I didn't really like doing stuff last August. So I gave up. That's pretty typical of my meteor shower experiences.

Thursday night, though, was great. It was midnight. We gathered all the blankets and trudged outside into the chill. I ended up putting my blanket behind the others. Kevin and Kyra on the right, Kaylie and Richie on the left, with my legs between the two couples.

I loved lying there, staring up at the Milky Way. There were no feelings of insignificance as I stared at the vast expanse of space (I checked), but it was still so very beautiful, all those spots of light. The whole neighborhood was absolutely dark.[1]

My eyes were playing tricks on me; since I'd never seen a shooting star, I didn't now what I was looking for. My contacts were slightly fuzzy, so I could see little streaks of light from staring up at the sky and I thought perhaps that might be what I was looking for.

We lay there in relative silence for a while. I thought about how much I like stargazing, but I wouldn't want to do it alone. I'd especially like someone next to me, keeping me warm but also watching the sky with the same intensity as me. I was glad enough to have the other people there but there was a bit of fifth-wheel going on.

Eventually we saw some awesome shooting stars. We saw quite a few, actually, in the hour or so that I laid out there. I can never complain that I've never seen one again.

I had much better thoughts lying there that night, but a day and a half has disintegrated them into little more than stardust. Whatever they were, I really wanted to tell someone but couldn't think of someone that would actually want to hear about it, so I determined to make a blog post. Even though I can't remember them, thought I'd make a post anyway. I really enjoyed the experience.

"Mission Street"


[1]Except for the light in our shed, which we noticed was on after a while. That led to a good conversation about what we would do if we got attacked.