planetary

I remember my parents taking me out into our big backyard in a now-more-affluent suburb to see Halley's Comet. I was four years old, I think. All I remember was falling asleep and that the moon looked swirly in the darkness. There were no lights in the backyard and it was there where I fell in love with stars, deciphering constellations of the summer and winter with a star chart, getting out books on the planets.

I used to wake up at 5am with my dad and I'd stand outside and look for Taurus and Cassiopeia and Orion, Sirius and the Pleiades, Venus, the morning star brighter than all the others fading only in the face of the sun. I was awed by the concept of infinite galaxies, of concepts of light years and nebulae and a God who knows each of the trillions upon trillions of  stars by name.

So tonight I'm pleased to see the clouds breaking ever so slightly so maybe I can see Venus pass past the sun through the lenses of my friend's welding glasses, standing on the shore like it's 4th of July with the throngs of people. It's not every day something like this transpires.