From Here to Infinity

When did you learn that elephants are big, that it isn’t polite to cut in line, that you can drown in water, that a triangle has three sides, or that we are prisoners on a lonely planet, lost among the stars?  With one exception, I can’t tell you when I learned any of those things.  But I can tell you exactly when I discovered the stars.  It was a long time ago in one of those moments unnoticed by parents but embossed forever in the mind of a child when Providence washed over me like a tide. 

I was about seven years old.  We lived in a small East Texas town in a white frame bungalow that sat facing the setting sun from the front of a treeless lot.  The front yard had evolved into two ecological zones, one on either side of a concrete walkway to the street. To the left was a no-go zone of untrod ground where sandburs propagated in riotous affirmation of Darwin’s maxim of survival of the fittest—even the most callused foot was no match for the burrs.  To the right was friendlier ground trampled into barren submission by the callused bare feet of cavorting boys and girls. 

Air-conditioned homes were a thing of the future; summer heat could be almost unbearable. Our defense was a big attic fan in the center hallway, which drew a torrent of air through open screened windows. But it was almost useless late afternoons when the Texas heat routinely crested above 100°. Seeking relief dad often ushered us out to the front yard hoping to find a breeze as daylight cooled into darkness. 

He and Mother sat on the front porch smoking.   Jim and I frolicked in the yard with neighborhood kids, catching lightning bugs in a jar or playing hide-and-go-seek, and Simon-says. As daylight dimmed and playmates scampered home to shouted calls up and down the street, I liked to stretch out on my back on the concrete walkway to soak up the latent warmth of the departed sun—cozy proof against the encroaching night.  It was pleasant to hear the thrum of cicadas and watch the light fade from the sky as I listened to Mother and Dad discuss the war and the events of the day.    

There weren’t many distractions—cars rarely came by, I can’t recall seeing an airplane, air pollution was unknown, and a small streetlight at the corner offered the stars dim competition.  There was a lot to see as daylight drained away—dragonflies and chimney swifts arguing in the air above, and lightning bugs coding their way through the condensing dusk.  But it was the stars that captivated me.  As darkness prevailed it was my habit to search for the first star. While transfixed I repeated the nursery rhyme Mother taught me: 

            “Star light, star bright, 

            First star I see tonight, 

            Wish I may wish I might, 

            Have the wish I wish tonight.” 

My goal every evening was to see the first star the instant it appeared.  I was never able to do it.  I inspected the sky with all of my concentration, but it was never enough—I scanned the heavens intently but the first star always appeared when I wasn’t looking.  I would search and find the sky blank and look again to find it winking.  The mystery enthralled me. 

On one evening well after dark when the stars were especially numerous and bright Dad pointed out the Milky Way and told me how it was made up of many, many stars that were too far away to be seen individually. 

“How big are the stars?” I asked him. 

“That is a very good question, son,” he replied from the steps behind me, out of view.  “They are very big.  They look small because they are far away.” 

“As big as an elephant?” I asked, thinking of only unarguably big thing I knew—the elephant in story Mother was reading to me at the time. 

“Much bigger,” he answered. 

“As big as our house?” I persisted, my eyes full of the tiny lights. 

“Oh, yes, son,” he said.  “The stars are very, very big and very, very far away.”  I heard him take a deep drag on his cigarette and heave a big sigh. 

I tried again.  “As big as the courthouse?” I said, naming the biggest object I’d ever seen, the red granite courthouse on the square downtown. 

He laughed.  “Much, much bigger.  Son, each one is bigger than the whole world.” 

Forever unfolded before my eyes.  Plunged into the fathomless ocean of space, in an indelible instant, I vested the sky with depth, grasping the limitlessness of the heavens. A feeling flooded over me that has not been equaled since.  With a new charge of consciousness, the world around me receded and stars filled my eyes—I was loosed in the heavens, afloat on a cozy space platform.  My head swam and I had a familiar, hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, the one I got when my mother read Bible stories and told me about heaven and how when I got there I would live forever, and ever, and ever….  The world began to spin. 

It was the beginning of a lifelong romance.  Years later, after learning about the speed of light, I stood in the same spot aiming Dad’s big flashlight at the moon and one star after another, flashing my name to them in the Morse code I was learning.  I watched each star like a lover, looking out the beam of light, my neck arched, growing stiff in the evening chill, imagining my messages racing through the void.  I think of them still. 

© 2022 Thomas H. McConnell