I must have been around six or seven when I first really thought about it, though I didn't understand it until I was a little older.
I was in first or second grade, and I had a best friend I used to play with, a little girl who lived right on the other side of the school. She used to come to my house, sometimes after school, or a few times I went to her house to play. One day I was walking over to her house after school, and I noticed -- really noticed -- for the first time, how it kept getting longer each time. I tried to tell her about it when we were playing, but I couldn't explain it and she just laughed at me. So I shut up. I didn't try to tell any grownups, because I thought maybe it was just 'cause I was a dumb kid.
But then a few weeks later, she started to notice how it was longer to walk to my house. Eventually it was too far to walk, and we stopped visiting each other except when one of our parents could drive us, and every time there were new blocks or new neighborhoods in between to see, all full of happy people. The next year, our houses had moved far enough away that I had to go to a new school, and so I didn't see her any more. (One Christmas, a couple years later, her family took the train to our city to visit us, because she missed me too. But by then we didn't have anything to talk about any more.)
I was really sad for a while, and finally I talked to my mom. She said,
"It's just that way. People grow apart, that's all."
Then she took me
out at night, and she showed me the stars, and told me about the
expanding universe. All the stars, all of the galaxies, all moving
apart from each other as things get bigger. And our earth and all the
people on it just like stars. That made me feel better. I still felt
sad, but there was this little tingle of beautiful to it, thinking how I
and my friend were just like stars that were being moved apart.
I decided after that, that I had better start enjoying all the new things and the new people nearby. And that's easy when you're a kid. It seemed like every day, there was a new little store to look at, or a little park. It was like every day was a holiday, with new kids to meet or things to do. But I also started to understand that if I wanted to keep friends, I had to choose carefully.
I made a real effort to like the kids next door, but they just weren't fun. I did kind of get to like the boy in the house one over, though. I had to work on it to pretend that we were really best friends, but it helped. Even when we got to junior high, he was still only about ten blocks away, and we could bike over to see each other. (In high school, we both learned to drive, but by then we were both a little relieved to be out of each other's company, and made some new friends instead.)
I started picking out stores nearby to be my favorite bookstore and toystore, too. That meant we could keep going there long enough that I could actually get to know the owner or the people there for a little bit before they moved away. (I once heard one of the bookstore managers solemnly tell my mother that I was "wise beyond my years.")
My mother and father had never been to college. They had lived at home with their parents until they met -- the usual "girl next door" romance -- and my father had learned the electrical trade from his uncle on the next block. Naturally, there was always lots of demand for electricians. They were really shocked when I announced I was going to college when I got out of high school, and floored when I said I had a full scholarship in astronomy to a college at Saintsdale across the state line.
That picture of the stars as people, staring at each other helplessly as they drifted apart, had stayed with me. It fused with the image of people as stars, glowing points of light in the dark. By high school I already knew a lot more about the stars and what they really were than my mother had been able to tell me. I knew they weren't people, but thinking of them as if they were brought some kind of passion to my studies. (Real passion? I was a little scared of it.) But I knew I had to study the stars.
My mother burst into tears, pretty much as I'd expected, and sobbed that she would never see me again. Even my father looked a little worried. But I had planned pretty carefully, and eventually sold them on it. There was a smaller college over in the next city, Mount Grail, which was not as prestigious as the one I had a scholarship too. In a few years' time, though, it would be. If I worked while I went to school, I'd be able to save enough to cover my train rides home for the first year, plane tickets the second and third year, and then transfer to the nearer school before my college drifted too far from home.
It worked out pretty much like I'd planned. I knew I was taking some chances, but they paid off. In college, I found out the corollary to the expanding universe of stars that my mother hadn't known about or hadn't cared to pass on. (Wisely, if so. I don't think I could have faced it as a child.)
When two stars, or galaxies, are beyond a certain distance from each
other, the speed at which they are forced apart eventually exceeds the
speed of light. Once that distant threshold is crossed, they can never
see or communicate with each other again. Human life on our expanding planet
is like that too,
I realized. I could flirt with the limits by leaving for college like
this, but if I went too far, I would never be able to make my way home
again. (Limited not by the speed of light, but by the kind of pay I
could make, and the sort of transportation I could afford to buy.)
At college, too, I found one more rare prize -- a young woman who shared my own passion for astronomy, and who had taken even bolder steps to reach it. Phong came from the poorer Asian country to the south. (I remembered it as being nearly on our city borders as a child, but by now it was far distant.) In accepting her scholarship, and transportation here, she had given up, probably forever, the hope of returning to her parents and family. She had exotic black hair and deep blue eyes. I fell for her deeply. By the time we became lovers, I had baptized her my "Rogue Star" -- she had left her accustomed orbit in the galaxy to boldly strike out across space, and I had been fortunate enough to capture her.
To my amazement, she was willing to follow me back towards my home town. (My guess had been fulfilled, and with the great population of the surrounding region, the Mount Grail college had become large and prestigious.) We stayed there for graduate school -- she visited my parents.
Eventually, we settled down. Phong and I married -- we made a trek to the far end of the city, so we could be married in the old church that used to be up the block from my parents' house. I found a new house next to my parents -- it's moved farther now, but I can still see them almost any week. There aren't many adults who can say they see their parents more than a couple times a year. My love and I teach at the new college in my neighborhood. Our three children are beautiful. I have been lucky, and I have fought hard to win and keep the family I had. But I worry.
From our astronomy studies, we've learned some things most of the public doesn't know. Every year the rate of expansion grows a little. It's true of the stars. Is it true of us, too, or is it only my imagination?
What will become of our children, once they have grown? Will they be able to meet and hold on to a lover long enough for children of their own? Or will they and we end up, like the distant weeping stars, careening blindly outward into the endless night?
-- C
Summary: My muse dropped by this evening Date: Sun, 13 Nov 1994 05:11:32 GMT
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