Conjunction

We moved to the suburbs in August. Part of the flood deserting the city mid-pandemic, sure, but if I'm representative of the exodus, we're just people who'd been wanting to leave the city for a while, suddenly able to now that our jobs were remote, suddenly desperate enough—with a fifteen-month-old in a two-bedroom apartment at least ten minutes from the nearest park—to push through the month-plus of annoyances-so-bad-they're-almost-suffering for what would be on the other side: a dishwasher, an office, a back yard. 

A couple of months ago, I was taking Miles out of the car after picking him up from daycare, and he looked at the sky and pointed. "That's the moon," I said. He said, "Moon!" And then, whenever the skies were clear, "Moon!" When he spotted it in a book's illustrations, "Moon!" And soon enough, too, "Star!" In the sky or on his bib.

I felt the same way, with our new, darker skies. Our neighbor has floodlights, the streetlight by our house is particularly bright. But still, there's been good stuff up there. Mars has been bright and high for a few months now, bright enough so that it's distinctly, decisively orange. And Jupiter and Saturn have been creeping closer and closer together, leading up to Monday's "Great Conjunction," but I don't need them to be THE ABSOLUTE CLOSEST TO EACH OTHER IN THE SKY THAT THEY'VE BEEN IN THE PAST EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS. I'm happy with just, they're close to each other. I'm happy with I can see three planets in the sky at once. I spot them and think, Hm, that doesn't seem to be twinkling. I take out my phone and open the Sky Guide app, which I think I paid a lot (for an app) for several years ago, and which is worth it every time, when I click the little compass icon and its own sky swings into motion to match mine. I hold my phone toward the non-twinkling object and am usually satisfied with confirmation. A planet. Three at once in the sky feels like a blessing—not a portent, but a little gift.