November 19th, 2002 - 549 am
". . .the moon loved them. Not because they were beautiful or because they were perfect, or because they were perky, but because they were her darling daughters."
Rebecca Wells, Devine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood.
*****
She went to bed at 11.30. Which was early for her but she had to be up and at their place in three hours, and the sleep cycle would be perfect if she fell asleep now. And so she did, dreaming lightly of shooting stars with tails that she could cling on to.
When her alarm went off, she felt disoriented. Why was her alarm going off at 2.30 in the morning? And then she remembered. She leaped out of bed, threw on some layers of clothes, grabbed the blankets she'd folded earlier and the apple cider and flashlight, and ran out to her car, carefully shutting the door behind her, so as not to wake the other people in the house up.
Pulling into their drive way, she felt a bubbly sense of anticipation. Hopping out of the car and bouncing to the door, she hummed Twinkle Twinkle Little Star under her breath as she knocked on the door and then, without waiting for an answer just barged right in.
"HI!" Coffee colored eyes shining.
"HI!"
After some mumbles and shoe issues they got in the car. All three of them, bundled up against the clear, cold night air. Walking out to the car, they all stopped to stare up at the inky black sky of the very early morning.
Piling into the car chattering giddly, they made their way to the park. After, of course, being pulled over by obstructed veiw caused by fuzzy dice. (Nobody said this wouldn't be an adventure!) Murmuring surprise at all the other cars, they clambered out at their destination -- a dirt field at the foot of the Flatirons. Spreading out some blankets, the three threw themselves down on the cold, hard ground and stared up.
The sky looked bigger somehow. Here, away from the lights of the city, the stars were brighter, closer, twinkling extra hard as if they knew that they would have a special audience. Despite the shreiks of the not so sober, the three girls stared at the sky and before long, each lost in her own world. Then, they saw the first one.
The metor, the shooting star, whatever you want to call it. Brilliant, white light shooting across the sky, leaving a trail of stardust, lingering only for a second. Sometimes, two, three or even four would streak across the supple expanses, relfected in the eyes of those who were watching.
She thought to herself, I wish for happily ever after. For everyone that I love. Happily ever after. I hope all of their dreams come true, the ones they know and the ones they don't. I wish that we stay friends forever, and someday, when we're all old and gray and creaky, we can make it out to a dirt field at the foot of the Flatirons and watch the stars, wrapped up in blankets, seperately, but together. I wish that everyone, everywhere has a dirt feild, and friends that will wake up at 2.00 in the morning to watch the metor shower with them. I wish that I never lose this. Thank you, whoever you are, thank you for this night, for these people, and for the stars.
She was struk for a moment at the transitory nature of things. The light from the stars she was seeing was years old, only reaching her eyes at this second. Those stars may not even be there anymore. But she knew that nothing physical was eternal. She hoped though, that these moments would be locked in time and for as long as she was she would be able to revist them. She knew that you can't order something that sweet.
***
