Kim Batchelor

Writer of magical realism and other imaginative fiction

Space

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My memories of childhood and my father are most vivid around his love of the space program. Even though he worked nights, he often got up very early to watch the latest launch, sometimes with my younger brother beside him. Once I decided, for some reason, that I would stay up all night. At 5 am, before I finally went to sleep, I woke my father in time for him to see a space craft rocket into space.

Space. Aside from two astronomy courses in college, I never really gave it much thought. I’ve written before about how much the sky and stars and moon have inspired my life and my writing. But I’ve never been good at identifying constellations or ever wanted to own a telescope. And until my astronomy class, I never knew that the moon maintains an irregular orbit around the Earth.

Something changed all that. The Cosmos series and Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Recalling those awe-inspiring trips to the Fort Worth planetarium when I was younger. Seeing recent vivid images of the universe produced by NASA.

In previous posts, I have written of my fascination with the moon, stars, and skies. Only in the last few years have I thought much about the science of the universe. I just finished writing and revising a novel of a girl named Gwen introduced to astronomy by a great teacher. Gwen uses that interest to create comic books and finds herself, at times, traveling to faraway place in the universe. For two years, I’ve journeyed with her and I will miss her when I move on to world of my next novel.

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A Dark and Starry Night

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fairy-tale-moon-and-trees-copy

Fall is my favorite time of year. I may not like the winter waiting in the wings, except for the rare occasions that snow covers the ground. There is something mystical, though, about that period between when summer takes its last breaths before sliding into hibernation and the bitter winds and rain of winter make their entrance.

Something distinctly different happens on fall days that has nothing to do with the change of leaves, which here in Texas, we get very little of. Can you feel it? Day or, especially, night, something slips in with the cooler air to give a slight sheen to the light of day and the stars at night. I’m sure the scientists would remind me that the gigantic orange orb that hovers just above the horizon doesn’t happen only in autumn. Or is that why it’s called the harvest moon, because that’s the only time you see it? A moon so fleeting that it slips away into ordinary moon-ness in no time.

A dark and starry sky captures best my experience in my last class teaching at the Dallas County jail. We talked life stories and focused on events, happy and sad, that make up that life. We used Deborah Harding’s poem, “How I Knew Harold” which tells the story of a life in events in non-chronological order. As the female prisoners constructed their lives, there were many common themes of taking the wrong course, meeting and hanging out with the wrong people, turning to drugs to self-medicate against difficult situations.

The class wasn’t all seriousness. During the opening activity when each person compares her mood that night to food, one class participant characterized hers as ‘smashed peas.’ By the time she constructed her poem, she shared a hilarious story about her childhood. And another, a 60-year-old, told of her excitement at going to junior high school so she wouldn’t have to see the same 50 boys she’d known since first grade.

Most poignant of all was when a young woman of 27 related how the judge had told her he was giving her one last chance. One last precious chance to turn her life around after many missteps. For that moment, she seemed to value that chance and planned not to waste it. One bright star in the darkness. One moment of possible transition between the bleak and a sunny day.

I see those stories, happy and sad, as points of light, like the stars overhead when I left the jail a free woman, able to drive into the evening and go anywhere I pleased. Able to stand outside and breathe in the air of the in-between place of fall. Enjoying the different feel of it without exactly knowing why that was so.

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Summer’s Starry Skies

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Several years ago, in a rural area in Nicaragua, someone introduced me to the Milky Way. My guide to the universe, a professional photographer who just happened to be in that same area, pointed out what I’d never seen before—an arc of stars above my head. Maybe I never noticed that arc before that moment because I spend so much time amidst the light pollution of the city. Only with assistance and complete darkness did I realize I could visually observe the celestial neighborhood where my planet lives. The absence of light is what made those bodies so vibrant to me, helping them to reveal themselves to us earth-bound observers as they maintained the rough alignment of their orbits, as if we were looking at the side view of a very thick and luminescent plate.

The skies fascinate just about all of us, I’m sure. No matter where we live, in the city or a place of spectacular natural beauty, our eyes can always turn upwards. Earthly lights may obscure that view, except for that evening every year when cities turn off those lights to reveal what’s above. Proposals are regularly floated to minimize urban lights and the pollution they cause every night, especially during bird migration season. Aside from saving energy and birds in flight, relieving us from being denied the pleasure of the heavens is a good enough reason to take action.

Blinking Stars at Night

When I was a child, my grandparents lived on the outskirts of the city, far enough out of town that when the moon was new, my sister, cousin, and I could barely see our hands in front of our faces and each other playing nearby. Most evenings in summer we were treated to a view of a brilliant sky as we swung through the air on swings suspended from a rickety swing set in my grandparents’ back yard. That memory is the inspiration for this month’s Wendy Darling Bedtime Story.

It’s almost time to say goodbye to the nights of summer for this year. Not far behind are the spectacular harvest moons ushered in with autumn. Until that transition happens in a few more weeks, I’ll take each evening as an opportunity to venture out to see what summer skies remain and remember my childhood when those skies were filled with falling stars and wonder.

 

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