the big dipper is a constellation

and other lies i tell

I don’t know anything about constellations but I know how to find the Big Dipper, so I look for it wherever I go.

At home, on the prairie, my children beg to lay out blankets on the roof so we can huddle together and stare, just stare, at every last shred of magic the cosmos holds. It must be marvelous to be a kid and to watch your parent shrink right before your eyes: One minute, an infallible giant of a dictator; the next, a thing as small and insignificant as you feel. There must be satisfaction in such a leveling.

But I’m not convinced that’s why they beg. I suspect it’s simply the seduction of a delayed bedtime, and usually I grumble that it’s too cold or too wet or too late but every so often I give in and say yes. Once we’ve reclined on the perilous slant where we really have no business being — especially not the little ones and especially not without a flashlight and especially not on a Tuesday night when there’s school tomorrow — I smell the sour sweetness of my children’s flesh and point out to them that impossible seven-star pot in the sky and when they shriek with glee I think: This is why I am alive.

But, of course, this is not most nights. Most nights I only cast an upward glance on the way from the car to the front door or from the garage to the trash bin, though sometimes I linger for a moment, grateful that one thing remains unchanged.

On this night I am in Minnesota, gathered with a small group of women, being fed quinoa and vegetables and cheesecake and belief. Most I didn’t know prior to coming, but now I’m asking a lesbian questions about sex and listening to a doctor describe internal organs as poems and marveling over a Californian who was emancipated from her parents as a teenager, and when I weep during yin yoga there is someone to stand over me, to cup my face, to say shh, you’re okay, because that is what women do when we gather; we find the most freshly bruised one among us and we promise her that we will stand guard while she rests.

The ceiling of the yoga room goes up, up, up, like a birth canal, like a vision I once had while on a morphine drip, like the portal of Mary’s assumption into heaven, never to be seen again. When I exit the space, it is into the cold black night, a thick canvas hanging over my head, painted with the only celestial shape I know. That the sky hasn’t changed feels a scandal, but still my shoulders slacken with the relief of the finding.

The Big Dipper isn’t actually a constellation, but I call it one anyway because who wants to go to the trouble of distinguishing an asterism? My children don’t realize that half the things I tell them aren’t true. I stand guard while they rest.