Carrying the weight of celestial events and other musings on learning to be alone

     Carrying the weight of celestial events and other musings on learning to be alone

 

 

One of the most difficult things about being alone, whenever in my life I have found myself there, or, put myself there, is not having anyone with whom to share experiences.

If you were to put yourself in my shoes for a moment (and a moment is plenty long…don’t try to do it longer than that or you’ll be reaching for bourbon or hydrocodone or Hollywood) it might make some sense. In my first 25 years of life I was never alone, unless I was in solitary confinement.

 

I was born number nine of eleven children.  Counting my parents, we were a family of thirteen. Sometimes we had a grandmother or friends staying over and often we had foreign exchange students so, until my oldest brother moved out of the house, there were 13+ people there.

Like it or not.

 

We were privileged.

Our house, if you included the basement, which you must, had three stories.  The integral basement space was comprised of 2 bedrooms, a full-bath, a game room, (complete with but not limited to, a pool table, foos ball, legos, train set, electric football, and ViewMaster “movies”) AND a hobby room.  Five bedrooms, a bathroom, and a “TV room” were on the top floor of the house. The main floor had the requisite living room, dining room, sitting room, and eat-in kitchen, plus a laundry room, sewing room, “Grandma’s bedroom,” and a third bathroom.

 

If you do the math, you find that there were fewer bedrooms than there were people. (You also deduce that we probably could have used a couple more bathrooms.) Only guests used “Grandma’s bedroom.” “The girls”, three of us often grouped as one unit by “the boys” who were two units,“big boys” and “little boys,” shared a bedroom for most of our younger years. The two little boys also had their own bedroom. The two oldest boys got their own separate rooms and four boys shared the basement bedrooms. We shuffled around as necessary when the older boys started moving out.

 

During my first thirteen years of life I was rarely alone. None of us were.  Until we became teenagers we understood that alone time was punishment time. 

“Go to your room,” was the signal that said expelee was “in trouble.”  For me that often meant that my crying or screaming had gotten on my mom’s nerves and she needed me gone.  I was allowed to come out of the room when I had “calmed down.” As a young girl I yearned to be released from the punishment of my three bed, four walled room.  I typically would sneak out from isolation early, still hitching and sniffling, tears streaking my face and sit at the very top of the long set of stairs to the kitchen. A would rest my head on my hands and strain my neck to see if I could see my mom’s feet in the kitchen.

“Are you finished?” She could hear me at the top of the steps, my diaphragm spasming from over use.

“Hhhh…hhhh…” trying to calm my breathing, “hhhh…uh-huh-huh-huh. I’m f..f..f…fin…finished.”

 

Of course the crowded house got less crowded over the years.  But when Mom and Dad divorced Mom got a smaller house. The remaining four (five, including Mom) shared a three bedroom, two bath house. It wasn’t as crowded as the home where I was born but there still was not much alone time.  We took to closing our bedroom doors, A LOT.

 

At 18 years of age I got married and started a family of my own. Out of the crock-pot and into a double boiler, so they say… or something like that.  Whatever it was, there always seemed to be a hot seat involved.

 

I have been married a few times with little time between marriages or boyfriends.  I won’t go into details about any of those relationships except to say that I probably ought to have spent more time alone. It’s much more predictable than marriage and I found I like the company I keep. I really like being alone. I just never learned how to do it. I am practicing now.

 

What I do miss about having a companion, however, is being able to say, “Wow, look at the sunrise,” and having the love of my life come running.  

Or, “You should see the size of the moon!” And he’d glow.

Or, “Oh my god would you look at that view?!”

Of course, even in a marriage, after awhile, the partner quits running to the front door to partake in the view.  For some people, it gets old, ogling the sunset. And, I have learned that certain views and large objects are more ogle-worth than others.  The views I liked weren’t the views they wanted.

 

I lived in Illinois when I divorced the first time and it was during this time that I realized my need to share experiences. Not being able to do that, with no one to say, “there’s a meteor shower tonight, let’s watch it,” the loneliness was poignant.  Driving Hwy 59 from my job at Florenz Restaurant in Fox Valley Mall to my home in West Chicago as the sun was setting proved difficult at times. It wasn’t unusual for me to pull over to the shoulder of the road and cry.  I’ve had a lot of practice crying and I understand my limitations.

Crying while driving Hwy 59 in rush-hour traffic is just not wise.  

 

In those days I wasn’t crying because I was lonely, I was crying because I was overwhelmed by the time of day; the sun moving to drape the horizon in robes of crimson and gold.  It was hard to bear the weight of that experience on my own. To take it in through a mere two eyes and feel the totality was too much. I needed someone else to help carry the view, so to speak, to take in part of it so we could share responsibility as revelers and compare notes.

 

Does that make sense?  

 

An event or scene like that demands an audience who can properly appreciate the undefinable. An unexpected or even expected glorious sighting of the Grand Canyon; Delicate Arch; the vast expanse of South Park just as you reach the apex of Kenosha Pass and make the turn to head down the mountain-BAM huge valley; the top of Aspen Mountain in the winter; Tierra del Fuego in the summer; The Boulder Flatirons poking out through the fog, the expanse of the Estancia Valley from atop Capilla Peak, the blue of the Mediterranean Sea, the Amalfi Coast, a bowl full of seafood in Sorrento, the colors and sounds of the Grand Bazaar, Giza…I could go on and on.  These things must be shared.  Their beauty demands it.

 

I’m not sure if I’m explaining this well.

 

Wherever two or more are gathered…

1+1=3

 

When I was 26 years old I started my first fall semester at Northern Illinois University.  I was taking geology and had my lab requirement for that class in the evening.  I was about three weeks into the semester and we were experiencing a gorgeous Indian Summer. Lab concluded at 8:45 pm and I chose, that night, to walk back to my apartment instead of catching the bus.  I was heading north on Annie Glidden Road enjoying the warm Autumn night when I noticed some strange lights in the sky.  The sun had gone down beyond the horizon but there was still a bit of twilight.  The streetlights had just turned on sensing the night’s curtain falling.  What were those lights, turquoise, silver, gold, white, stretched across the northern sky, moving almost like ocean waves in low tide? I had never seen Aurora Borealis but I figured it must be that.

 

I stopped in my tracks and stared at the sky.

“Holy shit! The Northern Lights? Here?  This far south?”

I started to run to my apartment, thinking I should call my sister, the scientist.

I rolled that thought in my mind but felt unsatisfied.  Vicky wouldn’t be able to stare at the lights with me.  I’d only be able to describe it and my words would be flat; unequal to the sight.

I slowed my run, fell to a walk.

Who could I tell?

Who could I show?

 

 

Funny…show and tell?  Is this the adult version of the childhood Friday afternoon school event?

I hadn’t thought of that before…bring in our best thing, our favorite toy, our newest project, and with the omniscience of an eight-year-old, tell all the other students about it?  Nope, this is not the same.  I’m not trying to show something of mine but am calling attention, for others, pointing out what they might be missing, something of OURS.

 

Anyway, I had gotten to know a neighbor of mine over the summer so I thought I might try knocking on his door.  With renewed energy I began to run again, back to the apartments.  If he were home I was going to drag him out into the courtyard to see the show.

David was home.

He was open to checking out the Aurora.

I’m not sure he was as stunned as I was, I don’t even recall his reaction, but I did share the moment, there was another witness to the rare event.  I didn’t carry the significance of it alone. And I will never forget my first Aurora Borealis.

 

During my years at the university there were several occasions when I drove my kids to the cornfields and parked my truck to view the meteor showers.  I had a little Ford Ranger with a topper on it. It was a perfect sky viewing vehicle. We’d climb up on the top of the cab, and topper and lie down so we wouldn’t have to crane our necks and then watch the heavens for shooting stars.  The skies were dark there then and the land was flat, nothing taller than the corn, so the viewing was scrumptious. Nothing blocked our line of sight and we took in our fill.

 

After I became a flight attendant my life changed considerably but my joy for being outdoors did not.  Sometimes I could share celestial views with flying partners and sometimes I shared them over the phone, “What does the moon look like where you are?  Is it still huge?  Can you cover it with your thumb? Is it orange?  How red is it?”

 

But it’s all so hard to describe.  Cell phones and social media have changed things a little.  I can take a picture and text it to my sister while we are still on the phone. Neither of us live in a place where we can FaceTime but if we did, we could compare notes that way.  And, having taken a picture we can share it with the world on FB. But the screens are tiny and the colors, an imperfect match. It’s just not the same as sharing it in person, the wide horizon, kings and queens of all we survey.  But we do what we can to make the most of what we have.

 

One night, I called my brother, Phil, in Wyoming and we started talking about the stars.  He is quite the stargazer and he has equipment with which to do it properly. And, like me, he lives where the skies are dark.  With black nights and the scope he owns he can see the rings of Saturn.  I have great sky conditions and binoculars but can not see the rings of Saturn. I can see billions more stars in the Milky Way than I can with my naked eyes and far more than anyone who lives in Denver.  But no rings of Saturn. Anyway, Phil and I got to talking and he pulled out his scope. I, 1100 miles to the south, pulled out my binoculars so we could look closer at Pleiades together. I don’t remember all of what we discussed but we were on the phone for a good hour checking out the planets and the stars. 

 

Yesterday, I reminded Phil and his wife, Jackie, to look for the comet, NEOWISE.  He said he didn’t want to get up in the middle of the night so I schooled him, “You can see it just after the sun goes down.  You don’t have to get up in the middle of the night.  Are your skies clear?”  They were.

I kept going.  “I read that you can use Ursa Major as your starting point to find it as it heads west. It’s easy to find.  I saw it as it was approaching the horizon yesterday.  It’s well worth it.

He got excited, “Jackie and I have been wanting to see the comet but last we heard it was only visible in the middle of the night.  We can stay up until 9:30. Thanks for letting us know.”

 

At 10:00 that night he sent me a text, “Got it!”

I supposed he meant that he and Jackie were looking at NEOWISE.

“What a beautiful grouping!” He added.  I made a note of the exclamation points and imagined the words coming out of his mouth as if we were all looking at the comet and The Big Dipper together, in my yard.

“Best w binos- no perspective w scope.”

Hmmmmm, I might want to get a scope.

I could ALMOST imagine the three of us shoulder to shoulder, elbows bumping working to get a great view of a firey comet and maybe the planet sentinels that are tracking it’s path.

 

He went on, “Face the scope the op dir tho & the rings of Saturn & moons of Jupiter pop 2nite!”

 

Another exclamation point. (I think I need a scope!)

 

“Wow!”  I texted back. Anything more failed.

“Right?!?!”  Phil can’t describe it, either.