They laid on their backs looking straight up at the night sky. It had been a very hot day and now a warm summer evening and the stars were emerging and plentiful.
They could have been teenagers at summer camp laying on a dock they had been diving off earlier on the day. Summer love with a boy doing back flips – literally – to impress the cute young girl he had developed a major crush on. They could have been newlyweds in Puerto Vallarta at the poolside or on the Captain’s Level of a Mediterranean cruise ship laying on comfy sofas with their eyes alternating between the stars and each other.
Or they could have been aging baby boomers, still wildly in love with each other after 40 plus years of marriage laying their creaky old backs on the sprawling deck of their mountain home. The pines, oaks, and cedar trees that provide much welcomed shade during the hot summer days also present obstruction to star gazing. So they positioned themselves in such a way that they had a clear view of the stars while laying on their backs, in the dark, with each other and their two Golden Retrievers lying nearby.
That was us, Holly and I laying on our creaky old backs and staring straight up at the night sky in wonder at the calmness and quiet of the forest and the glitter of the emerging stars. The view was so much clearer on this night. Or maybe it just seemed clearer because we were “in the moment”. A moment when time slowed down and our world was in balance with our collective lives.
Reflecting on those moments of star gazing, I think about that the young refreshingly good looking teenage couple on the dock. And of the the thirty-something newlywed professionals floating on the Mediterranean Sea. I think that they would be blessed to have what Holly and I had on that night, after 40 plus years of marriage, laying on our backs, with our dogs, on our deck, looking up at the stars between our trees at 3100 feet.
From Paul Simon’s “Hearts and Bones”
You take two bodies and you twirl them into one
Their hearts and their bones
And they won’t come undone
Hearts and bones
Hearts and bones
Hearts and bones
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