Growing up is stupid

Photo of the Pleiades by Mario Mesaglio on Unsplash.

Growing up is stupid.

When I was a kid, I’d imagine what I’d be like when I grew up. I imagined someone who looked like Logan’s dad, my Sunday School teacher. I’d wear a white button-down shirt with a red tie (This isn’t related, but I also really hoped my singing voice sounded like Mac Powell from Third Day).

A few years ago, when we bought our house on the outside of town, we had three bedrooms. One for us, one for guests and my wife said the third could become an office where I could write. I’ve always wanted my own space that looks like Bilbo’s Study from Bag End in The Fellowship of the Ring. I’d have a window where I could lose myself in thought while I smoke my pipe, there’d be no computer because this is a place for ink and good thought, My job doesn’t require that I pour over old maps, but there’d be old maps on the floor.

My daughter was born and took the guest room and now our second child will take over my study. My only stroke of luck was that I chose blue for the study and our second kid was a boy, so I didn’t have to repaint it.

So now I’m in the garage with the bipolar weather that we call our East Tennessee climate.

The other night, after putting the kids down and then the whack-a-mole game that is one waking up, then the other, and back and forth for hours, I finally got some time to myself at my desk in the garage.

I didn’t know what to do with myself. I wrote a little, read a little, prayed a little. And then I just sat there. A cold wind, some of the first of the finally arriving winter, braced my garage. I could smell the last of the fall leaves as they scuttled about looking for their last resting place where they’ll help renew the earth next spring.

The garage door sound made me jump when I pressed the button because my kids can sleep through a hurricane in the car, but the lightest creak of the ankle walking passed their bedroom gets them screaming in 14 milliseconds. I braced, craned my ears, but no crying came.

I stepped outside and looked up and I shrunk. I shrunk down to a child again, looking up at the stars. The sky was clear, and each had their own pocket of space to fill with their light. One was brighter than all the others and given that it’s December, it’s easy to think about Wise Men following one to meet Jesus.

I’m a grown-up but I don’t know much about science. I couldn’t tell you why the stars feel closer in winter. I’ve heard it takes millions of years for their light to reach us, but in the Winter from my driveway it seems like they’re within shouting distance. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.

And as a grown-up, I just don’t get around to things. I’ve always meant to get an app that could tell me the names of stars. So I did.

I saw Jupiter, the big bright boy leading the Wise Men directly above me this time of year. I saw Saturn ducking towards the horizon. I knew Orion and the Big Dipper. And I met the Pleiades in-person. The Pleiades are a cluster of 7 stars, the most visible cluster to the naked eye. The Greeks called them the 7 sisters (the name Pleiades means the daughters of Pleione).

I’d heard of them before because God asked Job if he knew how to bind them together. The Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible picked up “Pleiades”, but the Hebrew text uses kîmâ (כימה). That is their name. The word means nothing else other than this cluster of stars.

Isn’t that amazing?

That doesn’t happen to me very much. I don’t see things that cause me to stop, to realize the breath in my lungs or feel how good it is to have cold wind race across your neck. My mind doesn’t get to that place of “I must know your name.”

For kids, that’s a daily existence. Bugs, remote controls, Corduroy’s missing button or just their dad can take them to that place of simply being amazed at something because they can see it, feel it, smell it, taste it, and touch it (And they will touch everything from boogers to curling irons to very breakable ornaments).

It’s the best. And that’s why growing up is stupid — I hope I never truly do.