Hale Bopp

As I wrote my memoir years ago, there were stories that didn’t make the cut. As I moved my office during the past week, I removed everything from my file cabinet (to make it light enough to lift) and as I replaced my files, I did a major purge. I also found stuff I hadn’t seen in years. Below is one of the orphan stories that didn’t fit the memoir.

The 4,000-year comet

In March, 1997, a comet streaked across the silent night sky. My son and I kept tabs on it, night after night, standing in the yard with binoculars. Every night we looked to make sure it hadn’t dropped beyond the horizon as we went about our day.

For 4,000 years that comet had burned its way around the Milky Way Galaxy far out of our sight. As we watched, Ben and I knew that my father had never seen that comet; that my grandfather and my great-grandfather and his grandfather had never seen it.

Long before my European ancestors set foot in America, though, the Olmec in Mexico had seen it as they worked in their corn fields and learned to grow beans, chili peppers, avocado, squash, and cotton. Some of my American ancestors, Iroquois and maybe Shawnee,  around the Great Lakes had watched it as they mined copper and hammered it into tools and beads for trading.

Like them, Ben and I watched and wondered where it had come from and where it was going. Would it burn out? Would it continue circling for another 4,000 years? Would some descendant of Ben’s stand watching it 4,000 years in the future? What would she look like? How would she respond to such a once-in-many-lifetimes-event?

Ben and I alone, among all the generations I know of, stood there on that spot and watched it tear silently through the depths of space, appearing to hang immobile to the northwest of our house in Lincoln.

One night, as I stepped through the front door, still staring at the ragged trail of flames, I realized I should be able to see it through the glass of the back door. I walked through the house, threw open the door and there it was, framed in the top left corner of the upper storm door-pane.

My grandmother lived with Ben and me then and when I realized she could see the comet without leaving the house, I was overcome with excitement at the prospect of sharing this celestial event with one of the most important people in my life. Here was something Grandma had never seen in all her 100 years. I could give it to her and maybe rekindle some of her curiosity.

I asked her to come to the back door. She complied—more to please me, I suspect, than to see one more sight in a lifetime of looking. And then, when she reached the door, she didn’t have the gumption to look up. I pointed and described the comet’s position, but she never saw it. Maybe in her heart she was already out there with it, flying with the fire and ice.