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| Shooting star in the night sky |
In August of each year, the Perseids
Meteor Shower occurs, and this year August 12th was the peak
night to view it. The news was hyping it
to be the best we'd seen in many years due to Jupiter doing something or other,
way out there in space. NASA streamed
one of their Sky Watch cameras so that folks that had clouds overhead could
have a way to watch online... or for those that didn't want to stay outside and
get eaten alive by the skeeters, like me.
However, I saw more of them by just going outside for a few minutes than
I did by looking online.
My sister and I slipped out the front door around midnight, when they had
been telling us the meteors would start, and stood on the wet grass in our bare
feet, and waited for our eyes to adjust to the darkness. Within a few minutes, we could see more stars
than a person could count (an advantage of living far away from city lights), and
stood there with our necks craned up looking at the night sky. We'd see a plane go by now and then but no
shooting stars. Then it happened, and
the first one truly took my breath away.
Yes, I'd seen shooting stars before, but something was special about
that first one. Then we saw another, and
another, and another. In the course of
about twenty minutes or so, we saw six or seven shooting stars.
Then I heard it. That all too
familiar buzz in my ear. A Skeeter! I had applied bug spray earlier in the
evening, but didn't want to take any chances.
I'm allergic to skeeter bites and seem to draw them like a moth to a
flame. Some folks do, and I am one of
those folks. So we came back inside and
left the shooting stars to the night sky.
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| Perseids Meteor Shower 2016 Photo Credit: Space.com |
I remember when we were kids, Mom's oldest brother would came over and we’d
spread old quilts out on the front yard and watched the sky. My uncle would point out the satellites in
the sky. I can't remember what we were
looking for at the time, or why we went to all the trouble of laying out
blankets and everyone watching the sky, but it was fun family event, and
something out of the ordinary, so it stuck in my mind as a favorite childhood
memory. Maybe we were looking for
meteors on a warm August evening... maybe we were looking for satellites. The annual meteor showers did their shows
back then as well, as far as I know.
My sister and I always shared a bedroom when we were growing up. At one point, my bed was under the windows in
the corner of the room in such a position that I could lay in bed at night and
look up at the stars, if I sorta scrunched up against the wall just right. The windows were open all the time during the
summer, back in those days, and the trees in the yard hadn’t grown so tall as
to block out the view of the sky yet. We
had no air-conditioning like we do today, so I liked to lay in front of the
window and feel the evening breezes as they came through those windows. I'd lay there, watching the stars, and
listening to the crickets, and the whip-o-wills and owls in the woods
nearby. I don't remember if I ever saw
any shooting stars, but it was always a favorite way to fall asleep on a warm
summer evening.
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| Wishing upon a star. Credit: Deviant Art |
What is it about shooting stars that tend to take our breath away? Is it simply the novelty of the situation...
the fact that we don't get to see them every day, which makes them seem so
special? Is it, perhaps, that we were
told as kids to "make a wish" when we saw a shooting star, as if it
held some sort of magic? There were
always rules about making those wishes though.... just like the wish you made
before blowing out your birthday candles on the cake. Well, first, you had to suck in all the air
you could hold because you had to blow out all the candles in one breath. Then, (whether shooting star or birthday
candles) you couldn't tell anyone what you wished for. If you did, then the wish wouldn't come
true.
I realized something, as I stood outside that night, bare feet soaked in
the dew on the grass... neck bent all
backwards, staring up at the night sky... watching that white streak across the
sky for mere seconds. I realized that
some of the most special moments in life are held within mere seconds... that
beauty is all around us if we'll only look... and that it's important to look
up now and then, and have your breath taken away.
"God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... "
~ Mother Teresa ~
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