Left Behind

Years ago Eldest Son was fascinated by constellations: not just any, but those of the Southern Sky. My wife decided he should have a shirt with the Southern Sky on it, and she got a dark shirt and fabric paint, and I painted the stars and lettering from Rey’s book. Eldest Son loved it, but outgrew it. Youngest Son outgrew it recently. The stars are still mostly there.

About the same time I picked up a packet of glow-in-the dark dots for stars, and mapped out where each star in the southern sky should be on the ceiling of my son’s room. With ruler and checklist and dots I spent several hours to do one quadrant of the ceiling. I wasn’t quite satisfied with the way things were turning out: reference marks were tricky and the pattern wasn’t quite right.

Evenings I generally spent with monitoring homework and other chores, and days had work to do. It has been over a dozen years, and the ceiling still only has one quadrant’s worth of stars. Eldest Son doesn’t live at home any more. I wonder if Youngest Son even notices the stars, or wonders why they aren’t all there.

The dresser and desk and original bed were gifts to Eldest Son from a neighbor in Aurora. (I fixed them up a bit) We chose the paint and accent wallpaper strip (of sailing ships) to match the furniture. You could tell it was a boy’s room, even without looking at the bookcase or the floor.

Eldest Son isn’t a boy anymore. A few relics of his are still in the room—a few figurines, a few books, the Space Shuttle poster—but most pertain to Youngest Son these days. Bionicle parts mingle with Legos (some of the Lego pieces I played with 40 years ago) and K-Nex on the floor now, and there’s a large box of pencils, which fascinate Youngest Son. A busted Space Shuttle is on the dresser and a crane (from the Crane Foundation, of course) hangs from the ceiling. The top bunk is abandoned to a K-Nex ferris wheel and roller coaster now.

Another half a dozen years and Youngest Son will be heading off for college too. I wonder what relics he’ll be leaving behind. I wonder if I’ll ever get the rest of those stars up.