On being a star

I never realized how home-sick I was until I came home, how much I missed all the things that annoy everyone here, and all the things that everyone adores. I even missed the seagulls! There’s something to be said for there being a variety of flora and fauna where you are. You have your typical city birds here, your pigeons and sparrows and grackles. It’s also rather common to see a flock of seagulls (minus the hair-do sculpted by Aqua-Net) next to a flock of pigeons, both groups hoping for you to drop some popcorn or bread or anything that could be remotely edible. All along the highway stretching between my small town and the city, you see pelicans and spoonbills and herons and sandpipers and just about any other shore bird you can think of. There’s even a whooping crane preserve not far from me at all.

There are seasons here! While they aren’t as vivid and extroverted as the seasons elsewhere, they do exist. Summer slowly melts into fall to the point where one morning, you step outside and notice that it’s a little chilly and you could get away with wearing a hoodie. The days are still lovely and warm and breezy and you could sneak away to the beach if you chose to, but the mornings and evenings are just autumnal enough to make you start thinking of soup and hot tea and woolen socks and pulling the afghans from the closet. I’m already wanting a butternut squash soup and grilled cheese sandwich and a mug of tea.

The sky here has been impossibly clear lately. It still takes my breath away to look up and see just how many stars I couldn’t see in Phoenix. The view is even more astounding when Chi takes me to visit her eldest sister on her acreage in a town where the nearest “city” has a population just barely inside the realm of four digits. There is nothing more spectacular than looking up and seeing a sky so black it’s purple with bands of the Milky Way stretched across it and you can’t point out constellations because there are so many stars out there. It reminds me how lucky I am to be alive, and this little second is all I have and that I’d better not squander it on what-ifs and if-onlys. Even remembering what it looks like out there has that effect on me.

Carl Sagan calls us “starstuff contemplating the stars”, and that is something that really resonates with me. It’s something I can cling to when life seems to be a bit too much to handle. I am made from the same things stars are. How can that not fill you with wonder and amazement and awe?

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