Watch for the Stars - Gazing the Manitoba skies.
"Watch for the Stars" the Manitoba tourism signs called to me, placed along the Trans Canada highway to light the way for each provincial attraction. After being stuck in the big city for so many months there was only one spectacle I was dying to see, the one that drapes it's way across the horizon nightly.
As the sun set, I got giddy in my seat. I could already see the sliver of a moon dancing in the sky, I imagined a night so clear that when I looked up to the diamonds in the sky above I'd see a thousand future loves, each one out shining the other, I'd see their successes, their ventures and their loves. I'd see the ghosts of my past, I'd cheerfully accept them and their successes, their ventures and their loves. In the same breath I thought of Baby Aurora, the latest little girly in our band of bad-ass babes. I thought of her name and it's relationship to the night sky. I thought of her new eyes seeing these sights for the first time. I thought of her future successes, ventures and loves. Not once did I think about myself. All the dreams I dreamed were for the other people in this big wide world. I thought, if I saw a star shoot across the sky my wishes would be for the world and not myself.
I took my grocery store iceberg lettuce salad and sat on the roof of the truck to observe the skies that night, it was crisp, but, I was bundled up enough to make even the most worrisome of moms proud. I sat and watched the clouds roll in, thinking they were going to rain on my parade and while no rain fell there were no diamonds dazzling in my eyes from above. However, there was one mischievous and yet equally glorious crescent moon in that night sky. The moon, stealing the spotlight from the speckled stars above, shone through the cloudy haze. It seemed to dance around me, teasing me. I would look at it, seeming to be equally so far from me and right in front of my nose. It knew I was pensively reflecting wanting to open up to this wide world of mystery, warmth, love, shining gold and glittering lights. It was as if it decided to not let me have any of that, instead I was to be alone.
I gave up on my salad, disinterested in finishing it, pulled my gaze to the asphalt in front of me, ready to get back on the road, when I was hit with the lyrics of 'Sweet Dreams' by Angel Olsen.
"I loved you most when I first found love in myself. And I'll give to you, give it all to you when I first find it in myself".
I looked back to that menacing moon and stared straight through it. I allowed it this small victory. It was just Him and I tonight. I accepted that. I knew it was alright.
That was when, very unlike in Bobcaygen where the constellations revealed themselves one star at a time, the whole sky light up as if someone found the switch to the Grizwald family christmas home. A sheet of clouds dropped from the sky and I stared up at a thousand bright lights, all glowing for me. My smile, beamed so bright, it even made that silly moon glow green.
