Remodelle

I’ve been on a seemingly hopeless quest to organize everything and to pitch the junk that accumulates after twenty-one years of marriage and kids.  A closet I always put off is underneath our entrance staircase and everything that we never hope to see again gets jammed in there.  Last week I broke down and cleared it out.  Hiding among the sleeping bags, boxes of Steeler memorabilia (go Steelers!), old games, and things unidentifiable, stood my son’s old Tasco telescope.  Holy cow it was beautiful!  Why the excitement?  When I was a girl growing up in the 60’s girls didn’t usually get things like telescopes – yes, it was still the dark ages when girls got gifts like play kitchen sets, Barbies, etc. (thanks for straightening us out Gloria Steinem).  Girls normally didn’t get to use one unless they had an enormously generous brother that possessed one. 

For some reason, my son never took much interest in the telescope.  I figured he wouldn’t mind (like that would stop me if he did har, har) if I dragged it out of the closet, cleaned it up, and messed around with it.  Which I did. 

The first night I did what every first time budding star gazer does – looked at the moon.  I had seen that before via telescope.  It still produces that, “oh wow” reaction.  I knew at that moment I was hooked.  On to the planets!  Venus has been in good view.  Let me tell you, there’s something about seeing the planets ‘real time’, instead of in pictures, that humbles a person.  I can only imagine how the first people to look through telescopes hundreds of years ago must have felt.

Even though I’ve been tired from staying up late and living vicariously through my son’s old telescope, I’m enjoying it immensely.  I may look into getting a better model.  I might even dig out that old metal detector next (heh, heh).