So the wife’s going away on a business trip for three days, and all day Sunday she’s doing laundry. All her laundry, ’cause she doesn’t know exactly what she’s going to bring with her. The problem is, something like half her wardrobe is line dry only, so by four o’clock in the afternoon there are pants and blouses and dresses and whatnot decorating all our chairs, tables, child-proof gates, and banisters. Even the deck railings are adorned with Chanel pieces.
A couple hours later, after we’ve all inhaled the delicious home-made pizza she’s made, and we’re herding the little ones upstairs for the bedtime ritual, I glance out the kitchen window and see her clothes still drying outside, lonely soldiers watching our house in the dark. I rush out to gather them up when I notice a bright shining object about 30 degrees high in the southeastern sky.
“That’s a planet,” I say out loud, “but I don’t think it’s Venus.” I rush inside, toss my wife’s clothes aside, and run upstairs to seek out my latest Astronomy magazine. Consulting its sky chart, I discover that it is indeed a planet: Jupiter. Jupiter! That’s the Little One’s favorite planet (because, I think, it kinda resembles a pizza).
I race up the stairs and yank my daughter away seconds before the brushing of teeth commences. We two-step-at-a-time down two flights of stairs to the basement office, tear through a couple of desk drawers, find my opera glasses, and hit the deck. With the glasses we can not only see Jupiter (only resolved to a somewhat larger pinpoint of light) but also, at an apparent inch away at a south-westerly orientation, one of its satellites – Callisto? Ganymede? She’s fascinated, and we’re fighting over the opera glasses.
Then, due east just over the horizon (which to me is my neighbor’s house and treeline about thirty feet away) I spot the full moon. I cajole the opera glasses from Little One with the promise of greater visual treasure.
What a surreal view that greeted me! The bright moon swam so low and so bright that it seemed to lay only five or ten miles away. An island shimmering in an Earthly cove, a terran inlet of three dimensions. Ghostly wisps of horizontal clouds imperceptibly flashed by, illuminated by the sun’s reflected glare. The lenses from the glasses gave the overall scene an olive-colored tint, and I could swear I could see birds flying in the far distance, perhaps for their nightly lunar layover.
Those mountains and craters five or ten miles away cast huge shadows across the bright plains and dark seas, where no doubt the Selenites toiled ceaselessly, burrowing tunnels between their wondrous crystalline cities, kept hidden from their sisters’ telescopic eyes. Gondolas helmed by wide-winged birds of prey pulled Victorian scientists, along with a somnambulant Greek physicist or two, through the dark olive ether to meet and explore and claim the vast lunar deserts and jungles for Queen and Country, and, perhaps, a muse or two. I knew the translunar air was breathable, though possibly a bit chilly. Oh to explore such a world, as men did up until the early decades of this century past, and in quite a different, unimaginable way only fifty years ago.
I handed the glasses to the Little One, who stared through them at the moon for long, long minutes until I finally told her in a stern voice to come back inside. I wonder what she saw through the lenses, and how it compared to my vision.
A couple hours later, after we’ve all inhaled the delicious home-made pizza she’s made, and we’re herding the little ones upstairs for the bedtime ritual, I glance out the kitchen window and see her clothes still drying outside, lonely soldiers watching our house in the dark. I rush out to gather them up when I notice a bright shining object about 30 degrees high in the southeastern sky.
“That’s a planet,” I say out loud, “but I don’t think it’s Venus.” I rush inside, toss my wife’s clothes aside, and run upstairs to seek out my latest Astronomy magazine. Consulting its sky chart, I discover that it is indeed a planet: Jupiter. Jupiter! That’s the Little One’s favorite planet (because, I think, it kinda resembles a pizza).
I race up the stairs and yank my daughter away seconds before the brushing of teeth commences. We two-step-at-a-time down two flights of stairs to the basement office, tear through a couple of desk drawers, find my opera glasses, and hit the deck. With the glasses we can not only see Jupiter (only resolved to a somewhat larger pinpoint of light) but also, at an apparent inch away at a south-westerly orientation, one of its satellites – Callisto? Ganymede? She’s fascinated, and we’re fighting over the opera glasses.
Then, due east just over the horizon (which to me is my neighbor’s house and treeline about thirty feet away) I spot the full moon. I cajole the opera glasses from Little One with the promise of greater visual treasure.
What a surreal view that greeted me! The bright moon swam so low and so bright that it seemed to lay only five or ten miles away. An island shimmering in an Earthly cove, a terran inlet of three dimensions. Ghostly wisps of horizontal clouds imperceptibly flashed by, illuminated by the sun’s reflected glare. The lenses from the glasses gave the overall scene an olive-colored tint, and I could swear I could see birds flying in the far distance, perhaps for their nightly lunar layover.
Those mountains and craters five or ten miles away cast huge shadows across the bright plains and dark seas, where no doubt the Selenites toiled ceaselessly, burrowing tunnels between their wondrous crystalline cities, kept hidden from their sisters’ telescopic eyes. Gondolas helmed by wide-winged birds of prey pulled Victorian scientists, along with a somnambulant Greek physicist or two, through the dark olive ether to meet and explore and claim the vast lunar deserts and jungles for Queen and Country, and, perhaps, a muse or two. I knew the translunar air was breathable, though possibly a bit chilly. Oh to explore such a world, as men did up until the early decades of this century past, and in quite a different, unimaginable way only fifty years ago.
I handed the glasses to the Little One, who stared through them at the moon for long, long minutes until I finally told her in a stern voice to come back inside. I wonder what she saw through the lenses, and how it compared to my vision.
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