Sky Watcher

I had a weird homework assignment once when I was a child. The teacher told us to go outside at night and look at the sky. In particular, we were supposed to notice the stars and record our observations: Were they of varying sizes and brightness? Did they give forth a steady light? Did they seem to have different colors?

It was the color question that really threw me off. To be fair, we lived in the city and stargazing fell far outside the scope of my usual routines. Sure, I shot occasional glances upward beyond the neon signs and roof lines if I happened to be out past dark. Once I even saw the Big Dipper while standing on MacDonald Avenue in front of my grandfather’s pizza place. A group of teen-aged boys were singing doo wop by the entrance to the subway station while I was looking at the very same constellation people had seen in ancient times, and even as a kid, this struck me as a wondrous convergence. But the stars basically looked like little white lights to me.

So now I had a brand new worry. Was I supposed to be seeing colors? I was not so much a budding scientist as a little girl desperate to please, and I had no intention of basing my response on what my own eyes told me. I wanted to know the right answer first. If I was supposed to be seeing colors, I would look harder until I began to imagine them.

But maybe it was a trick to see how suggestible we were. I asked my brother Eddie if the stars were different colors and he looked at me as though I might be from one of them myself, which didn’t help at all.I don’t even remember how I resolved this particular dilemma, but as you can see, my sky-gazing career got off to a very inauspicious beginning, and I’m afraid that I still have a tendency to doubt my own perceptions in favor of others’ expectations.

But that isn’t what this is about.No, this is about watching the night sky, and what prompted it is the news that the Geminid meteor shower will reach its peak tomorrow night against a dark, moonless sky, and I intend to bear witness. Nowadays I actually live in a place far from the city where the sky is a vast indisputable presence, eminently watchable. On some nights, the stars are so profuse and bright they create a milky swath of light -- hence the name Milky Way, which had never made sense to me before. But I have in fact been a fond watcher of meteor showers since the Perseids’ performance in 1992 when I lay out on the deck of our trailer in Laguna Beach until nearly daybreak. It was a most unforgettable show, well worth a stiff back and a little sacrifice of sleep.

Sometimes there’s a great hype about these showers and it turns out there’s nothing much to see, but I’m the annoying sort of person who has to at least check it out. I’ve been known to set clocks and jump from my bed or lie for hours outside in a sleeping bag, growing chilly and impatient. I cannot explain why even the most ephemeral streak of a shooting star gives me such a thrill. Maybe it’s seeing the trajectory of forces set in motion eons ago, or the excitement of beholding a momentary wonder, gone in an instant, and you know you were just lucky to have glimpsed it, and you carry with you afterwards a lingering sense of having been blessed.

I seem to have more memories of the Perseid shower than any of the others, probably because they make their appearance in August. One summer, perhaps ten or fifteen years ago, the shower coincided with a visit from friends, one of those lovely gatherings of women who intuitively know how to tend to one another. We were celebrating Donna’s birthday but were also resolved to cheer up Teresa, whose marriage had abruptly ended, through no fault of hers. Christine was with us, feisty and fun as ever, and Millie was there, too, she of Tom Foolery fame -- anyone who remembers the chocolate shop near the old theater on the peninsula in Newport Beach would have known Millie and hopefully tasted her lemon bars, a treat which some of us still crave.In those days home was a little rental unit on a horse ranch in Solvang, looking out onto a large green meadow that led to stables and vineyards and eventually, if you wandered in the right direction, to the back of the old mission, which happened to be the site of a fiesta that evening.

I have no idea how we managed to maneuver this exclusive girlfriend time without the kids, but there we were, and let me tell you just a few of the highlights: birthday cake made from scratch, Donna in the kitchen singing an old Bonnie Raitt song (I wish I could remember which one), walking outside in the summer night while the strains of Mariachi music drifted through the air from the mission, and then, seeing Teresa standing strong and smiling, a shooting star above her. I decided at that moment there might be magic in meteor showers, and as childish and trite as it sounds, it’s a silliness I still hold onto.

So you can be sure that I’ll climb out of bed on the 13th to stare at the sky and watch for Gems, and if that proves unsatisfactory, I’ll try again the next night. Talk about hype: A quick google search yielded this quote from one astronomer: “If you have not seen a mighty Geminid fireball arcing gracefully across an expanse of sky, then you have not seen a meteor." Another declares the Geminids to be simply “the best annual meteor shower” and promises that this year’s will be “spectacular.”

There’s a special bonus, too. Mars will be exceptionally bright, and as it makes a close approach to Earth, it will appear to be yellow-orange. Like a colored star…Oh, dear.

I hope I see it.