I was outside painting trim and looked up into the sky, wondering if the clouds that were up there were planning on blowing by. I decided to go inside and take a look at the weather report and instead came across the article posted below. You would think I would have this down by now, that early August means it's time for the annual Perseids meteor shower. I know that when it comes around I always promise myself "next year". I tell myself that next year I'll go up into the mountains to watch the event, next year I'll get away from the lights and the cloud cover, next year I'll be with the kids and we'll do it someplace where it's dark and wild and the sky is filled with the wild slashes of light crossing our skyspace. Next year.
Not too much different than that chapter in Corelli's Mandolin where they tell each other "after the war".
This year I once again stumbled upon the article reminding me that the best sightings will be after midnight and before dawn. The lights from the shipyard glare all night long, power outages or not, and tonight will be no exception. I can remember when the Estranged One and I took blankets out onto the back lawn and turned out the lights. We even asked Mary, our old neighbor at the time, to cut her alley light and she did, giving us an extra bit of darkness. It was a gas all the same, watching and looking for those quick bursts of light, but still, we knew if we had hightailed it to the mountains or the ocean with the brood we would have done better. "Next year...."
Then there was that night four years ago when you and I were both tuned into the showers. You had out-of-state company, The Detective's family was in town. You got along well with your brother-in-law, and both of you walked over to the playing field by your house. You told me of that comical moment when the county sheriff caught both of you in the dark, and you told him about the meteor shower and he let you go. That was funny and tense I am sure, but you managed to catch far more meteors than I did that night. I took myself out onto the lawn behind my house and craned my neck and saw a few, even woke up early and took myself out onto the porch before dawn to see what I could see. I still remember the blazing emails that took place that night, the "did you see that?" kind of response to the occasion. It was a grand meeting of the minds, well before we had like minds to meet.
Or maybe I am wrong about that. Maybe our wavelengths were already tuned in. Maybe we were already chatting on some higher frequency and our rigid social lives and borderlines and firewalls prevented us from hearing that conversation.
Know that in the end we capitalized on that etherial wavelength, but never were able to see the Perseids together.
But in some ways, maybe we did. We crossed the ether that night with those blazing emails. You were in a field some eight or so miles away with family and I was on my porch and we saw what we could see, in a sense together but apart. We shared our feelings about those sightings afterwards as if we were some internationally known astronomers. We were, in some ways, that night about as international as we could be. Maybe more in the realm of bandits, or smugglers, or thiefs in the night. The meteors were just an excuse to talk, even if the talk just took place here, here on the internet. Face it, we were thieves. We had already stolen each other's hearts. We were just waiting for the 27th of August to return them.
We just didn't know it yet. Not that night. Not the night of the Perseids.
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