One more reason I am crazy about the guy I married: he loves shooting stars – I mean how romantic is that?  When Halley’s Comet came around in 1986 and Joe was just a year old in a car seat, we went out with friends to Mt Diablo, I think, in the middle of the night, to see it.  We took lots of pictures of ourselves and Joe in the car seat, telling him as if he understood that when he was 75 years old he would be able to say he was at the last go round as well.

Over the years Al would be our leading astronomer as we pulled out sleeping bags and blankets to watch the Perseids every August from our front patio or rooftop.  One year he dragged us up to wine country to see a less famous but even more spectacular comet – we had to get up at 2 a.m. for that, took all our stuff out of the cabin and settled on the ground – you could really see it, too.  The kids were pretty little and it is doubtful that they have a conscious memory of it, but those are the kinds of things that form little brains into instruments of wonderment.   Star gazing while camping – a given.  We used to get our star maps out to find constellations but after a while that gets kind of silly and all you really want to do is stare.

One year Al and I went off to a marriage retreat.  We were really struggling – the program was called Retrouvaille and is  for marriages that are at the end of their ropes.  Our counselor told us Marriage Encounter was like an oil change.  Retrouvaille was an engine overhaul.  I remember sitting in the car on the way to the peninsula retreat house and thinking “well, this is among the last times I will have to put up with this SOB’s lousy driving. ” I was not convinced things were going to improve.  Obviously I was wrong and it was a healing weekend that allowed us to move forward.  The boys were being cared for by a young man in the community and when we called home on Saturday an excited and take-charge Joe informed us that the meteor showers were occurring and that they had big plans to get up and watch them – which they did.

Among all the things that went down that weekend at the retreat – the letters to each other, the times talking it out, the prayers, it was that phone call that reminded me why it was worth putting up with Al’s driving (he’s really not that bad, I just don’t like not being in control) for another 40 or 50 years.  If nothing else, he has been the best father to my sons that a woman could ask for.  And of course, there is so much more “else” that keeps me starry eyed.