The Mundane Way

Last fall I took my nine-month-old daughter outside a little after five o’clock in the morning. She had been up most of the night with a snotty nose and had apparently thrown up at one point because of all the drainage. In the dark of my bedroom I felt for an outfit to put on her, got her dressed, then took her out the back door. Despite the fact that we live in area with considerable light pollution, the stars were vivid and pointy. I quickly identified the Big and Little dippers as well as Orion’s Belt. Thin white clouds moved slowly between us and the stars. The moon hid somewhere behind the tall old oak trees. I paced in my flip flops up and down the gravel driveway, turning over small bits of rock with each step. My daughter lay in my arms, her head in the crook of my left elbow. For the first several minutes she gazed at the lights around her: my next-door neighbor's porch light, the street lamps, the light from our laundry room near the back door. Crickets chirped their fi