Star Magic

It was time when my summer world smelled of pine trees and lake water. I was about seven years old and our family was living at the New Jersey Camp For Blind Children where my dad was the camp director. My teenage sisters worked there as well. My mother helped the cook and the camp nurse on their days off. We lived in a stone and wood lodge with a hearth and a staircase that had the best banister to slide down that I have ever seen.

My summer friends were blind and visually impaired kids from all over the state. I spent a lot of time in an apple tree with a girl named Lois. We used to throw apples at unsuspecting passersby. I swam in the lake every day. We had campfires at night and told stories and sang songs.I remember the words to every song. There was a bat that lived in the rafters in my room one summer. Every night I caught little toads that seemed to be everywhere. Camp smelled good, it felt good, it was my happiest place. It still is. I go there now and I feel the same sense of awe that I felt one very special night....

My parents woke me up in the middle of one night to see- what I swear I heard them say - a "comic". I remember thinking that comic book must be awfully special for them to wake me up before dawn to read it. But then my mom said there were comets and shooting stars and that we had to get up and see them- I think it was the probably the Perseids meteor shower. My dad wanted me to wake up and see the shooting stars. He was very adamant. He wanted us all to get up in the middle of the night and see the stars streak across the sky.
The sky was very clear. There were many falling stars - I looked at them as I inhaled the rich night scented air of the camp. We could see the Milky Way . My mother said," It never ends, it goes on forever, there is no ceiling"! My sister told me that some of the stars that we are looking at might not even be there anymore because it takes light such a long time to travel to us. I felt like my world had been turned upside down. I knew my life was changed for ever. The stars blazed across the sky and I watched, amazed. I felt small and big at the same time. It was the most wonderful thing I had ever seen. I was drunk on awe. I was blissful. I was scared. I was shivering. Something woke in side of me. I swear I heard music from the sky that night.

In 1997 my dad was dying of Alzheimers. it was the year of the Hale-Bop comet. My mother loved that comet - she told me that she said "good night" to it every night. She could see it out of the window of the apartment that we had rented in our town when we brought them down to live near us. I wanted my dad to really see the comet, to know it was there. I took him to a church outside of town, to a place where the light from the towns is dim. Where the sky is clear. We stood in the field and I pointed at the comet. He looked at it and smiled a bit and then got distracted. I pointed it out to him again and he said,"It all moves so fast. You can barely catch a glimpse of it, It moves so fast." Every time I pointed it out to him he saw it as if for the first time. Seen, forgotten, seen again anew.

It all moves so fast. It really is over in the blink of an eye. I stare at the sky now every night and thank my parents for waking me that particular night at Camp Marcella.

In 2001 my husband and I woke our kids up in the middle of the night and took them up to a dark hillside to see the Leonid Meteor shower. We had heard that it was going to be the best meteor shower ever! We told the kids about the tail of the comet that was raining stars on us. My eldest daughter told her sister that some of the stars in the distance might not be there any more. We talked about the fact that the sky never ends. I saw my childrens' eyes get big. I saw their lives change. I watched them discover awe. I winked up at my mom and dad who had died a few years before. I know I heard music from the sky that night.
It all moves so fast. It is all so beautiful.