Look up!

I have a confession to make.  Early this morning, well before it was time to wake up, I stirred, realizing that Joey was quietly standing next to my bed, staring at me.  And instead of getting up and putting him back in bed, I closed my eyes and held very, very still.  I'm an expert at this: we had a pet dog.  And I didn't re-open my eyes until I heard Joey pad back down the hall and climb back into his creaky bed.

I don't blame Joey for being confused about "wake-up time."  For one thing, he's been falling asleep much too early at night.  All of the kids have been extra tired and a little uncomfortable lately, with some sort of GI bug that is working its way through the three of them.  Alex, in particular, has been eating alarmingly little because of it.

But also, as we approach the daylight savings switch, we're definitely noticing the darkness in morning and evening.  It's still dark at 7:00, when the kids usually wake up for school, so I imagine it isn't so clear, anymore, to Joey, whether or not it's all right for him to be out of bed. Back at home, this is the time of year that I'd be hitting the mochas hard.  Here, since it's Switzerland, I'm taking my chocolate straight up.

Since the days are short, there are no more after-dinner soccer games with the neighbor kids.  Instead, the kids have settled into the habit of playing long games after dinner, particularly with Dennis: the last few nights they've been rediscovering Munchkin. (Aaron, why is it that I can hear you groaning, clear across the Atlantic, as I type this?)

Our sunrises and sunsets are synchronized with Seattle since we lie on the same line of latitude. However, unlike our old home, the nighttime skies here have been consistently cloudless.  You can look up and see a sky full of constellations up there, and tonight I made a promise to myself to take advantage of this little fact.  My kids are shamefully, tragically unfamiliar with all things celestial. Ella's Kirkland school has a telescope loaning program, but both times we borrowed the scope, it remained in its case. The first time we made it through the list, it didn't get dark until 9:00, well after bedtime. And the second time, it was cloudy every night of the week that the telescope was in our possession.

This is such an embarrassment to me: I was raised better than this!  My mom gave me a subscription to Odyssey magazine when I was about Ella's age, which I used to love poring through. She has her own little telescope with a solar filter, and I remember her bringing it to our school so that our classmates could look at sun spots, or setting it up in the back yard at night and showing us the rings of Saturn or the Horsehead Nebula.  And she was the librarian for the Chagrin Valley Astronomical Society, which meant that the walls of our basement were lined with thousands of back issues of astronomy periodicals, each of which she carefully read and catalogued.

The best part of that gig was that she could get the keys to the society's observatory on Indian Hill.  She would take us for camping trips up there, and she'd spend the night peering into their 16-inch scope. She would happily search the skies for M-objects, calling us over when she found one; the rest of the time Kathy, Billy, and I would play with our flashlights and make friends with the local barn cats and make ourselves sick eating candy. (I'm looking at you, Kathy.)

All of this was on my mind two weeks ago, when we were staying in Wolfrathausen.  Since we got there so late, and since the city was pretty remote, I was able to show the kids some stars, even despite the lights from the church next door.  They and I were both so excited about it that I now have a long series of photos on my camera that look exactly like this:

My astronomical photograph skills are not up to snuff.

More recently, I was reminded of the importance of showing the kids the heavens, this time by Alex. We were on our way to play ping pong at the playground. Alex got a head start, and when I joined him outside I found him just staring at the sky, his mouth open.  When he saw me, he shouted "MOMMA! I just saw a ROCKET!"

Oh, honey, I think that's an airplane, I told him.

But he insisted: "No, momma, I saw it glow red in the smoke, and airplanes don't do that! Only rockets have red fire, so I think it must be a rocket!"  At this point he was smiling dreamily. "Momma, what planet do you think the astronaut is going to?"

I'd decided not to disillusion him about the rocket. What harm could it do, Alex believing that he saw something so magical?  But I at least had to tell him this: "So far, honey, I think we only send people to the moon, and to a space station, which is like a big floating house in the sky."

"I think he's going to the moon." he said decidedly. I agree. The moon is cool.

I handed Alex his paddle, and as we walked over to the playground, I heard him whisper once more: "I saw a rocket."

When I told Dennis this story, he grinned along with me. That's exactly why we need a space program, he said. For the sake of the five-year-olds.