Starlight, starbright: Wishes and Dreams

Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight...when I first heard those words at a Girl Scout singalong, I was a junior, possibly a cadet. Anyway, old enough to put no stock in such nonsense. In my tween-aged wisdom, I was far too worldly to believe in such things. I laugh at that so-called wisdom now, but, as an adult, I might just think those stars were watching out for me. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

         Considering our relationship now, it's crazy to me that my dad was there at the start of my obsession with space. It started out at parent-child space camp in Huntsville, Alabama. For so many years, my dreams mostly lived in Huntsville. I tell people now that Huntsville was the launchpad where the spark of interest was lit, which would eventually become a raging, all-consuming inferno.
         Raised by our mother, my sister and I spent most of our childhood taking care of each other. While my mother worked two jobs, I was the one at home, making sure chores got done, homework was finished, dinner was made, and, to my chagrin, was usually asking my younger sister for help with my math homework. I'm sure she's still laughing about that. She'll probably rip the page out of this book and frame it. Not that I resented my mother at all. She was supporting two tween/teen girls as a single parent, with, more often than not, no help from my father. We had a routine, and it worked for us.
         Until high school, I had big dreams-but they were just that, dreams. High school was when I started to understand how much work those dreams would take. As a senior, I was applying for colleges, dreaming my big dreams, when one day, I came home inconsolable, convinced college wasn't for me. That particular day, my guidance counselor, upon hearing of my dream to one day work for NASA, had told me to "be realistic." That crushed me. If I had listened to her, this would be an awfully short story. As a young adult, going through the turbulent changes of puberty and newfound independence, of course my dreams included shouting her name from the rooftops. As an adult, I sometimes resist the urge to send an email from my work address, asking her if my dream seems so unrealistic now. However, as an adult, I also recognize how very little impact that would have, and how it would greatly diminish my achievement to nothing more than a spiteful success story. In the end, my story has very little to do with her-my achievements are mine, and they're the reason I achieved all I set out to do-which started out with nothing more than a wish, whispered into the sky late at night, with no idea that wish could-and would-come true.