Starry-Eyed

       Maybe there’s something about having lived more than half your life that makes you quite nostalgic. Plenty of people seem to think that you have all your fun in your twenties, and maybe that is true for some people. I think that every part of your life has meaning and importance. I don’t even know what my near future holds, but perhaps when your middle aged you can see your life’s path more clearly as it stretches out before you. I hope I see it that way some day. I hope to hold both past and future in high regard, but I’ll probably see middle age the way many people do. Something flat, progressing along the same road you’ve always walked. Doing the same things that you’ve done every day for years on end. Coming back to the same town, the same house, the same people maybe. I hope to not come home to an empty house, but maybe I’d like to live alone. I’ve always liked the quiet. Of course, I’d never really be alone with my cat and whatever activity I choose to occupy my mind.

             My dad and I lived together in the house I was raised in. With all of our cats and all the empty rooms our family used to live in. A lot of it was broken and cold because we couldn't always afford heat or to fix things, but we had plenty of warm memories there.

             “Babygrillll!” He called as he opened my bedroom door. The cats flooding in and disturbing the black cat that had settled down for a nap on the edge of my bed.

             It was a cold night like this one when he told me to come outside with him. He told me to put on a coat and grab my binoculars he had gifted me a while ago.

             “Out! Out!” I yelled at the intruding cats as they scurried out. “Come on, moon baby.” I said to the incredibly disgruntled, sleepy black cat. He moseyed out too.

I took my phone off the charger and went out to meet him on our old, unfinished porch. There wasn’t much room for standing, and I’d never lean on the railings after my brother fell off the porch that one time. So, I sat on the steps next to him. He told me to point my binoculars to the Gemini constellation. He said that there was supposed to be a meteor shower tonight.

             I looked up, and I wasn’t sure if I’d just wanted to see it or if I actually did when I stared into the magnified void. It looked like tiny flashes of light across my vision. It was so faint I thought I might have imagined it. I told him I saw them anyways.

             “I remember one night like this.” He said. I chuckled a bit. He had a knack for using everything to tell a story about his childhood or the military.

             “Of course you do.” I said back.

             “Just listen. I remember a night like this when I was just a teenager.” Just as I thought. “It was cold like this. Maybe it was the same time a’ year. Me and my friends had gone out to the woods outside a’ town and made up a little fire for ourselves.”

             “Sounds illegal and ill-advised for a future fireman.”

             “It was the 80s. No one cared what we did. No one even knew we were.”

             “Mhm. Lovely.” I said sarcastically.

             “You know, they had a TV program that came on at 10pm to remind our parents to see where their children were.”

             “Yes. Yes. You told me about that one already.”

             “Anyways, we had ourselves a li’l bonfire. We all had a few and were winding down for the night.” I imagined my dad with his friends in a clearing. I had heard about his friends from childhood before. I’d probably met their older selves or knew their kids. Maybe my mom had been around somewhere too. They were friends back then. Not sure why she hung around those guys. They always sounded a little wild. Then again, my mom is pretty wild too. I imagined them winding down. Maybe some sneaking off with girls into the woods. Maybe some had passed out or were trying to fight sleep, but my dad was awake. I imagine even a quiet, sleepy town like this was even quieter back then, before the invention of all these things that make so much noise.

             “I laid my head back on a log and stared up at the night sky...” They’d probably done this a million times before. They probably set up this space years ago. I wondered if it was still there.

             “…and there was this light streaming 'cross the sky. Soon they were everywhere. It was amazing. You shoulda seen it. You woulda loved it.” My dad was always a bit dramatic, but I imagined the sky lit up for him that night anyways.

             “Wow. That actually seems really cool.”

             “Yeah. Probably was easier to see it out t‘er. All this damn light pollution these days.” Just at that moment the streetlight on the corner started blinking again.

             “I thought you talked to the council about that dang light. It’s so annoying. Half the lights in this town don’t even work.”

             “I did. It just isn’t in our budget.”

             I sighed. “Poor towns. What’ll we do? Guess we’ll just all get seizures and die then.”

             My dad laughed. A lived, worn sound. Not exactly something I’d call old. Something that reminds you how many times he’s laughed in his life, how many times he’s probably told all these stories before.

             “Maybe we will. Maybe then we’ll get some damn funding.”

             “You’d think there wouldn’t be so much to spend money on in a town like this.”

             “You’d be surprised, babygirl.”

             “I suppose I would. Hm. Politics.” The sound of crickets and peep frogs creeped in as we stared at the night sky and the air bit at our exposed fingers trading the binoculars. I’d lived there my whole life, but I was only a teenager then. My dad was in his 40s, and he’d lived there his whole life too. We didn’t go many places, but in a lot of ways, me and my dad are different, even though we’re from the same place. I’d always thought he didn’t exactly like those parts of me. The parts that didn’t like what he liked or didn’t think like he did. The parts that weren’t so simple as enjoying watching the pretty night sky.

             In a lot of ways our relationship is still complicated, but at the end of the day he had told me that he loves that he raised me to think independently and be my own person. He says that I’m already smarter than he’d ever been or would be. I think that in my own way I study astronomy in college for him so we can enjoy the stars together. I can do the things he never got to do for him, and I can go the places he never got to go. And maybe one day I’ll even have half as many stories to tell him as he’s already told me.