Tonight, while awaiting the arrival of my aunt and uncle, finally coming home from their ten-week vacation, I received a message from my aunt, asking if my cousin and I were still awake. It was 10:56 when the message arrived. I called her in response, and she asked if we wanted to go see about seeing the Perseids meteor shower with them. Ten minutes later, we were on the road to meet them in a dark place surrounded by trees. It was supposed to be only fifteen minutes away, but my cousin wanted to drive, and he drove ten to fifteen miles per hour under the speed limit for some reason… and he almost ran us off the road more than once… I’m not so sure his eyesight is okay…
Anyway, we arrived to the parking lot in the median on the highway, and we lay down on some sleeping bags that my aunt had set out on the ground in front of their vehicle. The temperature had been 79°F at the house, but it was down to 74°F st this particular spot, but still with high humidity, so there was moisture around. When I lay down, my arms were wet within a minute, due to the dew on the sleeping bag.
The sky was gorgeous. I’m not sure I have ever been able to sit and see the sky like I saw it tonight, so dark and deep with stars and planets – the more of them that are visible, the more of a depth that is added to the sky… it really feels like we are in a galaxy, looking up at a sky like that… I’m not sure I have ever felt so much a part of something so much bigger than just the little world around me (literally)… it was glorious. I put my hands behind my head, and I basked in the depths of the galaxy around and above me…
So, we chatted and watched, and we all saw some meteors – my aunt kept stressing because she was always looking the wrong way at first. Eventually, though, we all saw multiple meteors. My aunt did a toast to the Perseid meteors, using the $15 whisky they had in the back of the car, and we all saluted the Perseids with a sip or so. She had tried many a times to see the Perseid shower throughout her life, and she had, at last, seen some of it.
My uncle told us a story of how, though he regularly lay in his truck bed in the driveway when he was a teen, watching the stars (and, my aunt added, listening to Peter Frampton [on his eight-track, he added]), there was one night that, with the sky dark-dark, and everyone had come for a watermelon smash at his home, a comet suddenly appeared, making the sky look bright as daytime while it passed. It freaked him out, apparently. That was in the 70s at some point. (I intend to look it up later.)
My aunt had never heard the story. And that is not very common at all.
Then, after work fumbling with her phone for a while, my aunt finally got the great version of “Baby, I Love Your Way” playing on her phone, and we all felt the time-warp nostalgia of my uncle’s nights in his pickup in the 70s. She had the volume low, too, so it really was like how it would have been back in that day.
While we were lying there after the song, my aunt said to me, “Hannah, you’re gonna have to remember this for me. Because I’m not remembering things too well these days.” I chuckled, and told her that I even would tell my cousin, her daughter, so that she, too, could help my aunt to remember this memory.
It certainly was a good one to have and to remember. 🙂
…..
Then, of course, we came home, and no one went right to bed. Dishes had to be washed (because my cousin hadn’t done it throughout the day), sheets had to be found (because my aunt didn’t like that my cousin was putting his junk on her nice sheets in the guest bedroom), and food and certain other things had to be unpacked from their vehicle. That, along with the general need for us to hang around and talk with one another, despite the fact that it was way late. We never found the sheets, but we did find something else my cousin had been looking for for a couple days so far. Finally, around 2:30/2:45, people went to bed. I had already showered and was doing stretches on my bed (i.e. the massage table), since they had finally stopped rummaging through the room for those sheets, at long last. Good thing no one is getting up early tomorrow… oh, wait… we all are. ::face palm and goodnight!
Post-a-day 2020
hannah ananas 