I really intended to stay up all night to watch the meteor shower. But it’s after 10 o’clock and I was falling asleep out there, on a breezy deck in an Adirondack chair with a blanket wrapped around me, watching the billion stars.
But I saw one. I saw one just as I was ready to give up and go inside.
I was really shocked by how close it seemed. It was like a hawk streaking in towards its prey, just above the house. Brilliant and intense, so fast and so alive, even as it headed to its destruction.
I’ve only ever seen one other shooting star in my whole life. And it was just when I moved here to North Georgia, at the age of 48.
In many other places, where I have spent countless evenings outside looking at the sky, it has so often happened that the people I’m with would say “Hey look, there’s a shooting star!” And I would say “Where, where?” And I would miss it.
It seemed I was destined to never see one. But I kept watching.
I used to feel that way about finding a life partner too. It really seemed that I was destined to never find the one for me, who was the right mixture of smart, sensitive, and strong, who saw the brightest light in me.
By some miracle of the stars, we found each other. And that has made me believe in so many other good things.
You only have to see one in order to believe. It doesn’t even have to be yours. If you know that it happens for others, then surely it can also happen for you.
You only have to see one in order to keep looking up at the night sky.
The penny for today is for that one – 2001.
[Meteor photo by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory]