The Stars Don't Shine

Farms and fields and forests fly by outside my smudged windshield. There’s a hint of autumn in the air, and we are on our way to escape the city for an afternoon hike.“The stars don’t shine, they burn…” plays in the background for (at least) the second time today. (Thank you, Encanto.) We might not be talking about Bruno, but we sure are singing about him.

My husband remarks how good the music is for a Disney movie. I hum along. My daughters are nestled, three in a row, across the back seat. The five year old belts out her best approximation of the lyrics, and the older two want to know what they mean.

I strain to hear the murmur of their discussion about shining and burning when one of them speaks up: “I think what they’re really trying to say is that shining is being perfect, but burning is good, even though it’s not perfect.

Time freezes for a moment, and then everyone is back to asking their sister to stop looking at them, verifying I packed the right snack, and wondering why it’s taking so long to get there.

In the middle of the chaos, of this less than shiny slice of life, I think about the stars. I think about the intensity of nuclear fusion, about how their atoms collide with such force that we can see their burn from unfathomable distances. I think about our own sun’s offering: heat and light in a billions of years long march to her own exhaustion. I feel like this sometimes, I concede.

A few weeks later, with firewood gathered and three pairs of glow-in-the-dark skeleton pajamas waiting in the tent, we huddle around the campfire. Our bellies are full of roasted hot dogs and marshmallows, the heat of the fire is on our cheeks, and we crane our necks to see the stars. I wonder how many light years these pinpricks of light have navigated in their journey from burning balls of plasma to our tiny campsite in the woods.

There is a gift in the burning, be it wood or hydrogen, patience or time. We take our place in time and in creation, our lives burning somewhere between the campfire and the stars. It’s far from perfect and it isn’t often shiny, but it is good.

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This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Words to Carry."