When my son was about 5 years old, I sent him to Grandma's for a week and painted the planets on his ceiling against a painted black void. Everything but the sun was to scale, with tiny Pluto tucked into a corner. I filled in gaps with pinprick stars and comets, and I painted above the door "Reach for the Stars!"
Reach for the stars.
In my hopeful young mother's heart, I wished for my son to dream, and dream big. I hoped for him to work hard to achieve whatever was possible for him to achieve. I tried to teach him to explore, both his world and his options. He looked under rocks and examined bird feathers. He peered down into tidepools and up into the sky. He listened for the music of his soul and expressed it brashly through his screaming trumpet riffs and quietly in the strumming of a guitar on a moonlight night. He looked and reached, but the stars eluded him. Like an untethered soul floating in the universe, he was without direction. Until he saw Saturn's rings through a high powered telescope.
He is now 21 and in his fourth year of college. We had a conversation a few weeks ago. Although I love his young, idealistic view of the world, his father and I were getting worried about the practical side of life, including college graduation. I tried, in my best motherly, non-hovering way, to try to help him find direction. What could he do with the credits he had now? What kind of job could he see himself in? Gently pushing him to finish what he started. He reminded me of our talks about the defining moments in life and how one of his was seeing Saturn's rings. His eyes lit up. He became animated talking about how his experience. He told me of his dream to own an observatory. At that point I thought, what can I say to that?
I've always said my son was born under a lucky star. Things just seem to fall in front of him. He recently moved to Flagstaff, Arizona to work at Lowell Observatory. While he was orienting himself to the place, he hooked up with a VIP tour and got to see behind the scenes, places other employees have never seen. He's excited and alive. I don't know where this job will take him, but he's moving in an interesting direction, and that's good enough for me. He's reaching for his dreams by quite literally reaching for the stars.
