Historical April 1986 report or notice. Original dates, prices and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
If it is possible to make a hyperbole about the cosmos, we’ve done it. Heavenly hype, American style. Halley’s, Halley’s, Halley’s … the chorus of adulation continues to orbit. How can one keep one’s perspective? I must admit, I totally lost mine. Besides planning an evening at the planetarium for a computer generated simulation and a March trip to Florida for a better vantage of the real thing, I found myself, my children (bewildered) and two friends (anticipatory) standing in someone’s front yard southeast of Fenton on a frosty but clear midDecember night.
We had gone there after an absolutely terrible meal in south county (the restaurant was packed) in order to escape the urban glare. Along what we hoped would be a country road loomed modern street lights.
We stopped anyway.
The kids’ persistent questions about where we were going and how long it would take had ceased to be merely annoying and now rang of a truth that had begun to haunt we three adult star chasers from the west end.
There we stood, armed with a star map, two pairs of binoculars and three different opinions of where the comet could be found.
We didn’t see it, of course, but’ I did learn a few things. I learned that after about twenty minutes of listening to celestial jibberish my five-year-old daughter would tell me, her father; who that very day had bought her a new party dress on a whim, that she had to go to the bathroom when she didn’t. It’s true that her older brother had put her up to it. But, still, she did it. I’m sure she thought her dad had gone as crazy as a loon. And, perhaps, she was afraid a classmate might drive by and see us. Mostly, however, she and her brothers just wanted to go home, and having to ‘go’ sure gets the show on the road. I learned from one friend (our star guide that evening) that a pinpoint of light just off Orion’s belt is not a star at all but an entire galaxy. Do you know how it feels to have passed your forty-fourth birthday by only one day, to hear the foot-fall of mortality a little more clearly than ever before, and then to look into a puff of light magnified to about one half-inch that is actually an entire galaxy?
In Fenton?
After your daughter has just lied to you?
Because she thinks you’re a loon? And, finally, I learned the meaning of two words.
One is comatose.
It means standing in the cold, staring straight-up through binoculars until you lose your balance (and most of your other abilities) and begin staggering around a stranger’s front yard.
The other is comatoes.
This means hoi:vyour feet. feel after your friend, who has gone comatose, steps directly on your arch.
On that particular night I saw a gleam in the night sky that is a whole galaxy and sat in an overly bright restaurant filled with people eating awful food served with indifference.
My daughter’s question in both places is still like a firefly in my consciousness. Daddy, what are we doing here?
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, April 1986.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1986_04.pdf, printed page(s) 4; PDF page(s) 4.
