Big Dipper

***Post written December 23

I am following the Big Dipper.

Among a damp atmosphere, all is velvet charcoal except for the slow, rhythmic winking on the wing and a spray of stars hung on milky shelves. They are clear, pure, fully aware of their beauty. I want to know each one by name.

This is the dark, December night in the turn of Christmas that breathes the saying “Home for the Holidays” to life. I will never get over these firsts, venturing this new world alone.

Hum of engine lulls me. I press deeper in the plush, vinyl seat and turn my eyes from the giant man beside me. He has a gentle face full of beard, and someone is anxious for him to be home. I had offered him a stick of gum and he just smiled.

In a strange sense, I am at peace with the writer I am becoming. I no longer shoot for fame. The love of words has found me again, 30,000  feet up in the air, surrounded by strangers, across the galaxies as I draw lines from one star to the next with my index finger. They are guiding me home, where warmth is so familiar and my old, embedded places seep into my veins, water my roots in need of such hydration.

And a few hundred miles away, the six people who mean the most to me gather in the car, piling on top of one another to greet me with easy, uncut hearts.