Stars

Last night was the end of a very hot day - 29C or so, the first of October! And it was a cloudless night, so at bedtime, instead of sending everyone to bed, we brought them out for a walk around the block and into the (dark, unlit) playground. I actually think we'd have seen more stars from our back garden but it wouldn't have been as exciting.

We saw patterns, some of which we could name and some we couldn't; the children saw their own patterns, and then Linnea lay on the ground and just looked, until she couldn't any more, and gave up. There's something overwhelming about a sky full of stars, how far away they are and how many there are and how clearly we seem to be able to see them - when actually what we see isn't anything like what's really there, the freezing expanses and the burning masses and the warm summer wind settling on our bare skin while we're down on the dewy grass. The juxtaposition is too much.

So today we bought a diary and she's writing one-word entries only about the happy things in each day.