Amazing Night Sky

I remember when I was a child that my father shared stories about the sky. Those fascinating stories were made up by my dad, but I believed everything he said. He said that the sky was a big animal that ate all the earth’s animals, and those animals became the stars. My dad told my sister and I to gaze at the sky, in order to try to figure out what animals’ shapes we could see in them. We thought that we could recognize most of those animals. For example, we saw rabbits, horses, lions, birds, elephants, dogs, cats and scorpions. Sometimes we argued about what their shapes were because my sister thought she saw one animal and I saw a different one in the same area, so we had to look at other things to decide what kind of animal it was. To do so, we had to find some features that made it a specific animal. For example, if it was an elephant, it must have had big ears and a long trunk. If we agreed, we ended the discussion. Then, we would name and adopt them as our imaginary pets.

Another thing we did was count the stars. When we saw big stars, we showed them to our dad, and the person who found the most of those big stars, was the winner. Even though there were a lot of stars, we never could finish counting all of them. I would be there for hours and hours looking the night sky because I enjoyed the shiny and bright stars and the moon that illuminated the night. The moon, in my child fantasies, was a cradle that rocked a child when he wanted to sleep, and I wanted the moon to rock me to sleep as well. When there was a full moon, I wanted to sleep in the backyard because it was beautiful, I did not need electricity to see all around, and I felt protected under the moonlight.

When I was a teenager, I associated the night sky with love. I liked to see my boyfriend at night because it was romantic to meet under the moonlight and stars. Everything was beautiful, and I felt more in love under the majestic moon. When I fought with my boyfriend, I cried and talked to the stars about my problems and fantasies as if they could hear me. Sometimes I wished on shooting stars for love, and I believed that my love conflicts could be solved by them. There is something magical about them because after doing so I felt better and in peace.

I do not know when I stopped watching the sky and its beauty. It is as if something happened in my life that made me forget it. One possible reason for that is that I am more interested in technology than in appreciating the beauty of a full moon or a full star night sky. I prefer to be at home watching television or in front of a computer. Unfortunately, I am teaching my children to do the same thing that I do instead of giving them examples of appreciating the night sky as my father did with me.