We are all borne of stars. Our bodies are made of gas and stardust, our souls intertwined with heavenly music and the DNA of the universe. Every soul once had a throne in the heavens, and looked down upon the earth in wait of their hour; they return to those thrones once their lives, however long or short, reach their end. It is believed that each falling star is a new life en route to earth; that each wish upon those stars is the hopeful prayer of two starry-eyed parents who eagerly long for and await the arrival of the child they wished for.
When I was a much younger man, a newly-married and naïve, poor excuse of an adult, I often coaxed my reluctant wife to sit under the clear night skies with me as I pointed out planets and constellations and dreamt out loud. I remember so many nights lying in the sweet grass with my wife cuddled close and my eyes fixed on the clear, star-sprinkled sky. Aside from drinking in the raw beauty and majesty of the heavens, I always had my eyes peeled for a particular celestial phenomenon: falling stars.
Two years and two months of marriage swiftly scrolled by and stirred up within me a longing I'd never experienced before – I wanted a child. I found myself overwhelmed by that desire as time slipped away, and became convinced that it was the only thing that mattered and that only thing I needed. I desperately wanted a child of my own to care for and coddle and kiss relentlessly, but for a long while (two years and two months of marriage, approximately), my wife wasn't ready for a young carbon-copy of her husband to invade her space and steal the spotlight.
On one of those crystal-clear nights, as I lay beside her and poured out my dreams of a twinkly-eyed baby boy, with her button nose and my rosy cheeks and her chestnut-colored hair, I felt her hand gently reach for mine to offer a light squeeze, and I glanced over to see that her eyes were full of stars and also trained on the sky. I felt peace in her tender grasp. In the weighty silence that followed, I knew she was seeking a falling star, too.
I never studied the sky more intently than I did that night. I felt a hopeful desperation well up within me as I strained my eyes and pulled my wife closer and rubbed her slender fingers with my pudgy thumb. Her warm breath on my neck calmed me. Peace washed through my entire body.
In that unexplainable moment of tranquility, our eyes both caught and followed a bright streak in the sky that originated in the north and ended in the west; a luminous orb that gracefully arced across the sky and vanished almost as soon as it was sighted. I felt my heart leap into my throat and instinctively gripped my wife's hand as if she would float away, and she let out a soft giggle not unlike a little girl's. We both saw it; there was no mistake about it. Another precious note of laughter slipped from her lips when I turned over to kiss her on the nose. We made a silent wish together upon that falling star, and knew in our hearts without saying a word that we both wished for the same thing.
Three days later, we learned we were having our first child.
Just like that, the wish came true. I can vividly recall the joy that overwhelmed me shortly after I trudged through the front door after a taxing day at work to find my wife waiting to greet me with open arms and diamond tears glittering in the corners of her eyes. She embraced me and whispered the news into my ear, and I was amazed at the power her simple words held. I marveled at how our wish had come true, to which she jokingly quipped about being careful what you wish for. I knew precisely what I had wished for and had no doubt in my heart or mind that this little baby would be everything I ever wanted and all I never knew I needed.
The star that fell from the heavens that clear night was clothed in tender skin and given petite fingers and toes and eyes that would sparkle like they did in the night sky months before. I watched in horrified, mystified awe as our precious, miracle star child was brought into the world through the cruel irony of suffering and pain. Words fail me as I attempt to express the myriad of emotions felt during those few hours of agony that seemed much more like they lasted a lifetime. I can immediately take myself back to the first moment I held our tiny baby boy in my hands, and how I trembled and sobbed like some kind of fool, harmlessly smothering our little baby with kisses all over his button nose and rosy cheeks and delicately-creased forehead.
The same mystified wonder with which I observed the heavens was the same way I observed our son as he grew and developed and baffled us daily with his intelligence. He was always on my chest listening to my heartbeat, or holding my hand and trying to keep up with my strides, or following me into the bedroom to play peek-a-boo under the blankets with me and his mother. My little shadow; a boy whose face began to bloom with distinct features of mine from the time he was a few weeks old, whose feet became squat and square like mine as he grew into a toddler, whose ears happily twitched at the melodic cadences of song in the same way mine did. I found myself aching to hold him from the moment I departed for work each morning. Even now as the ruthless demands of my job and other uncontrollable outside factors pull me further away, I am perpetually longing to spend each breathing moment with him.
My little shadow accompanied me stargazing on many nights when my wife threw herself headlong into the demands of housework and made no room for such a frivolous waste of time as stargazing, as she often harped. With full stomachs and happy hearts, my son and I would often lie close together in the same patch of cool grass I consistently haunted, and I would whisper the names of constellations and planets into his ear and tell him silly tales of my brief adventures on some of those planets. My son, nearly three years old at the time, always overflowing with questions and bursting with unbridled curiosity, finally asked me what exactly a star was. I felt my heart swell as I remembered with vibrant clarity the very night we wished for him, and continued on to tell him about our roots in the skies.
The simple words that proceeded from his mouth spoke to a gnawing desire that had silently begun to undermine me over the previous few months; one I had never given voice to or acknowledged up to that point. He grabbed my hand and breathlessly exclaimed that he wanted a baby sister, and that we now had to focus all our energy on looking for a falling star. Though his words fully awakened my heart and brought to light my quiet yearning for another child, my right brain warned me of the absence of my wife's opinion in this matter.
Be careful what you wish for… she had said it herself! That night I left an apologetic kiss on my son's warm head and promised we would look for falling stars some other time. In order to follow through on that promise, it involved talking to my wife about that touchy subject. I knew it was a proposal she most likely was not ready to deliberate. I was right.
Two weeks of gentle pleading didn't faze my reluctant wife, and bringing home flowers and chocolates to help butter her up didn't seem to work any magic, either. (Strange, since I was lead to believe that flowers and chocolates and kisses would have been somewhat formulaic to baby making. At least, it had worked pretty well the first time.) It wasn't until our little boy began to test the waters by suggesting that he wanted a baby sister for his quickly-approaching third birthday that my wife softened and opened her ears. It's hard to ignore the pitiful sobs of a toddler and even harder to deny them what they ask for when they are crying.
Several days before my son's birthday, I took him stargazing as I promised before. His sharp eyes picked out a swiftly-falling star mere minutes after we had planted our bottoms in the grass, almost as if he had willed it to appear. He wished on that falling star aloud, even though it's been said that if you speak your wish aloud, it won't come true.
Three days later, on his third birthday, we learned we were having another baby. To this day, he will tell you that he's never received a better birthday present since then.
By a stroke of the miraculous, our second little one was a beautiful baby girl and every last thing our son had wished for… from her rosy, pink cheeks right down to her curly blonde hair (a genetic trait not immediately apparent in either my wife's or my side of the family). She was everything he ever wanted, and everything I never expected. From the first moment I held her and pressed my lips against hers and watched her tenderly smile, she melted my heart in ways my son could never cause it to. I felt in those first quiet hours with my daughter that my entire life was now charged with protecting that innocent, sweet flower. My son felt the same way. From the young age of three, I sensed that my little boy, quickly maturing beyond his years, would lay down his life in a moment for his baby sister.
That little girl has stolen my heart, ran away with it, and hasn't given it back. She's incredibly similar to her mother; I see it in her flirty, saucy glances, the way she folds her arms in defiance, and in the slight pop of her hips as she walks. My daughter educates me on dresses and dolls and has forced me to learn how to style her hair. By the time she is grown, I will have a Masters degree in fashion and cosmetics under her tutelage. I often fear she'll grow up to cause me (and many young men) much heartache.
My children are rapidly growing at a rate I have no power to slow down. How I have longed to freeze all time and space and anchor them in babyhood; how I have anguished over the time lost to my job and other misfortunes that I will never get back. In my mind, I have attempted to reach back into time and grasp a picture of my baby daughter taking her first steps, my son learning to ride his bicycle, or my little girl speaking her first words, but they are eternally lost to me and instead are replaced with unsightly mental images of my boss and of hungry Bulborbs. (What a terrible father I am, that I would ever allow those things precedence over my children. I suppose I can't be too hard on myself, though. Much of it has been entirely out of my control.)
In the small times I am able to share with them, I am consciously cherishing every moment. I marvel at how beautiful they are becoming and believe with all my heart that they will always carry traits of their celestial beginnings. They give off warmth and happiness and life, and abound with virtually limitless energy. Their laughter is melodious, shimmering like the natural vibrations of the stars. Their eyes glitter like the stars did in the eyes of my wife the night we wished for my son.
I often look into their bright faces that shine with ethereal light and remember their origins in the sky, and I'm utterly overwhelmed by my love for them. I never regretted the wishes I made on those two falling stars three years apart. I got exactly what I wished for and so much more.