Skip to main content

Michigan Sky in Winter


The middle of a Michigan winter. Darkness slipped down around us early, and we would move in a huddle of coats and hats and scarves that, if they covered our faces, would trap our breath and the smell of damp wool next to our mouths. We didn't care how cold it was; we wanted to be outside, where everything seemed still, the silence broken only by our own voices and the sound of our feet crunching across snow, our footsteps and teenage banter made louder in contrast with the surrounding quiet. We would lie down on the tennis courts that were beyond Faculty Lane, on the other side of the highway from the main campus buildings, near the summer camp's "High School Boys" area. During the academic year, there was really no reason for any of us to be on that side of the highway—then again, it seemed we were often where we had no business being. We'd lie on our backs, side by side on the cold clay courts, a chill pushing through our padded layers, reaching up and down our spines, and we would look up at the Northern sky, awed. The stars sent the sparkling light of their fire down to warm us—if not physically, then in spirit. There were so many stars, impossible to count, and against their cushion of deep blackness, they seemed so close, within reach. We mapped out constellations, watched for shooting stars (and always saw them). In those moments, we knew how small we were, how unaware of the mysteries of life, but we also knew that space, infinity, the possibility of anything and everything, was ours. Living among the bright lights of the city now, it is not so often that I see stars in the night sky. There are some I can point out to my son, but they seem faint and so distant, it hardly counts as an experience of stars. We take an annual camping trip in the summer, and then the vault opens for him, the jewels of dying suns spread themselves out for his pleasure. I hope that in his life, he has the chance to experience the magic of what I had: the Michigan sky in winter; its dazzling, endless display that kept our hearts young and full of wonder, even at an age when youth seemed worthless.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tap Root Manuscript

Here is an early music memory: I am very young. If not still a toddler, then not much older. I am running around the living room, squealing with unrestrained delight, while my dad chases me to the tune of "I Am the Lion" by Neil Diamond (Ba-pa-la ding-ga!). He's reached deep down and pulled out his big baritone voice—the one he also used for "Old Man River" on occasion; the one that always awed me. It's the early 1970s, and although hopelessly pop and showy, there is no shame in liking Neil Diamond. Not at this time. Later, I'd go through nearly two decades of keeping this (admittedly) often schmaltzy artist at more than arm's length. When I bothered to remember Neil Diamond, which generally I didn't, I thought of him more like a skeleton in my musical closet; a dirty little secret that, if exposed, would set me up for some heavy razzing from friends. I don't remember when it was that I recovered my dad's Tap Root Manuscript album. It wa...
7 comments
Read more

Black Kids Read, Too

The worst kind of prejudice is the kind that slips under the radar. It's too subtle to cause a stir (and if you point it out, you'll usually get a sideways look: you're the one making too much of nothing), but its corrosive message nevertheless seeps in—subliminally, insidiously—beating down the spirit of the group it belittles or excludes. I am blessed to have been raised by two parents who were sensitive to prejudicial undercurrents; they fought against them in their own distinct ways through the tumultuous 1960s, and into the 70s and 80s as I was growing up. And it seems, thinking about it now, that they never missed a good learning moment with me: we often discussed issues of bias, prejudice, stereotype, and their harmful effects. This week, images in some of my kindergartener's reading books gave me pause. And in wrestling with how to handle these, I remembered something I hadn't thought of in many years: the library at the Brentwood Science Magnet School in ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Touch Typing

Between seventh and eighth grades (or between eighth and ninth?) the deal was this: if I wanted to take an art class in summer school, I had to take typing. So said Mom. Although I didn't mind being in an art studio soldering bits of stained glass together, the thought of staying inside, seated in front of a typewriter when I could see the sun in its beautiful blue sky out the window, was torture. Still, I sat there. Such is the suffering one will endure for art! I typed the home keys in order, hundreds of times: a-s-d-f-g-h-j-k-l-;. I stretched my fingers up for T and Y and down for B. I did pages of the prototype sentence, "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs." Yes, it has every letter of the alphabet in it at least once. I learned to automatically put two spaces after each period. (I have had a hard time undoing this habit, but a copy editor's job these days is often to make sure there is only one space following a complete sentence!) It's fair to say...
3 comments
Read more