It's Time For This

Yesterday afternoon that shooting star came to mind, the one that appeared on a clear winter night last year.

What’s in a memory? I thought as much about that—the way the memory rose up out of nowhere—as I did about the remembered thing; the shooting star which, similarly, invertedly, fell down out of nowhere.

Memories come with the unspoken message - it’s time for this. What this is, and what that means depends, I guess, on the memory and the rememberer. I don’t think memories are as free-floating as they seem. Like the star that shoots across the sky, the memory arrives, dragging a tail, tied to which are instructions for how it would like to be received. It’s time for this.

It was the third night I had laid out in the dark that week. I was well set up by that stage. I had dragged a bench from the outdoor table and oriented it north to south so that when I lay down the Milky Way was pulled up and over me like a blanket. It was placed on the far side of the lawn, tucked behind trees and shrubs to block light from the house.

I was wrapped up warm. Multiple layers and a hooded down coat. A beanie, thick socks, gloves and lined gumboots. The first two nights I underestimated how cold it would get. I was prepared this time. I would stay as long as it took to see a shooting star.

I’d been out for nearly an hour when it happened. After that long outside at night, the eye is as adjusted to the dark as it can get. How big are our pupils at that point? I thought of the time my son was given drops to fully dilate his pupils for an eye test. How big they were, how unnatural they seemed. If there is enough light to see them by there is, consequently, nothing to see.

The sky was silvered with stars that night. The Milky Way filled in and thickened. In an hour the sky had shifted a few degrees. Some stars had become hidden behind trees. New stars had risen up from behind the hills. I could feel the earth’s turn. When I remembered, if I kept reminding myself—the sky is still, it is me, it is me moving—if I kept saying it, I could feel it. But I’d forget. It’s hard to remember. What seems to belong to another is sometimes ours. What we are sure is ours, sometimes isn’t.

The sky had ceased being black. It was shades of purple and blue. And it wasn’t a blanket of dark pinpricked with light. It was a patchwork. Patches of dark stood out amongst the stars. Patches of dark stood out from other darknesses. It was layered, overlapping, full of dimension and depth. It was a soup I could put my arm in and swirl.

I saw an owl. Or rather, I registered the passing of an owl. There was a going-out of lights, a blocking of stars as it passed between the sky and me. It rolled across the sky squeezing the light out of the stars and releasing them again, not a single one out of place, none diminished.

I could fall asleep here. So sleepy, so warm, so at peace on the slow carousel was I. I closed my eyes. In the dark, away from the blinding stars, from the dazzle of purple and blue in the sky, I registered the falling dew on my upturned face. There would be fog in the morning.

Content in the dark, loving the feeling of being alone under the stars, the pull of sleep was strong.

Open your eyes.

I blinked them open and she was already there, the star. Falling, streaking north to south, drawing a line above me, head to toe. She was right above me when I opened my eyes, and in a split second she was gone, swallowed by the sea of stars.

What is a memory? A message from somewhere, in service of something. One of the many voices that swim in the sky that we’re part of. Suggesting this, offering that, begging us to open our eyes so we don’t miss it. Here it is. It’s time for this. Open your eyes. Don’t miss it.