Hope delivered by the night sky

 

I’ve been thinking of my home this morning, and of all the changes it has been through since I have owned this property. I moved to Florida in September 1981. I moved here to this address in January of 1982, and mostly, this is where I have lived. When Steve and I married in 1984 we moved out briefly in 1985. We spent a 2-year period between a new little house up town (we, neither of us, were town people), and then in a trailer his uncle owned. We were on an acre or so, and there were berry farms surrounding us. We bought this place; 2 ¼ acres and an old falling down house from his dad in 1987, and it is where I have lived ever since. The new house (this house; now nearly 30 years old) was finished in February 1997, and I became the sole owner sometime around 2000. That is a different story for another day.

The neighbors were never close at hand; close enough but we are not on top of each other in this neighborhood. The neighbors to the right had been here longer than me. Their “new” house was built in the late 80s. They sold out a few years ago; too much property to care for as they aged. Across the road, those neighbors died two years apart, after living there longer than I. She died first of brain cancer, and he followed of the same disease in December 2024. To the left, on a small ¼ acre lot, the neighbor who had been here the longest died, around the same time Gracie and Joe sold their place. Now the neighborhood looks forlorn and sort of neglected; my yard included. My house is beautiful (ignoring the gutter which was bent and dented from Hurricanes Milton/Helene, when several old heavy oaks twisted and one fell on the house; a bent gutter is better than a punctured roof!). Because the sun now gets to the underbrush it has grown into a tangled mess that I need to get taken care of; eventually. So for now I live in a beautiful home surrounded by a lot of Florida nature.

Lat night I walked out into the yard around midnight. I wanted to move my car off the grass onto the concrete pad for today’s lawn service visit. It was still; a dark and heavy night. The new moon is Sunday, and the crescent moon had not yet risen; or, if it had, it was shaded by cloud cover. The Big Dipper hung in its summer spot over the Simpson’s house across the road. It helps me locate myself on the map, knowing where the Big Dipper sits in the summer sky. Growing up at the lake, the dipper hung over the lake on summer evenings; aligning me slightly to the (south)west, toward Canada and the St. Lawrence. Even now, all these years later, I know where I am based on the position of the Big Dipper. It provides the smallest comfort and sense of wellbeing. The night was so dark and still, and yet the darkness felt comforting in a strange way. It is no secret that I do not like Florida. I don’t like the weather, the politics, the traffic – none of it.  Still, there are moments of clarity and peace, even living in a place I do not like. I know I will eventually move, although I go around in my thoughts about where it is I want to be. Last night I had one of those comfortable, contented feelings; surrounded by darkness, placing the Big Dipper in the night sky, the whole night sort of holding it’s breath for the next big exhale. For that moment in time, I felt the peace I used to feel in the night’s of my teenage years, of the nights looking out my bedroom window waiting for life to begin; nights looking out of my dorm room wondering where my life would take me. I felt that sense of wonder and awe last night as I looked at the night sky. I am not young anymore, but I am also not old and at the end of my life. There is always a reason to hope, to wonder, to pray, and to dream. Last night under the stars I remembered that, and it filled me with peace.