So today I was determined to climb out on the roof again to paint the second coat on the shutters. As I was pulling the heavy wood and metal blinds up, they slid out of their holders and put a dent in my head. I immediatley became nauseous, got a terrific headache… the likes of which I have never felt before… and I saw stars. The kind of stars that circle around the head of  Daffy Duck or any Looney Tunes character who has had the unfortunate experience of being hit on the noggin.

I spent the majority of the day in bed popping aspirin, groaning, and trying to remember if my DO NOT RESUSCITATE orders were on file at the local hospital… just in case.

Stars are  usually a glorious thing. When shining brilliantly at night they light our way to uncharted places. They remind us that there is something other than ourselves taking up space in the cosmos. They sprinkle the sky and our minds with hope when we wish upon them and they let us see history in its making. I still get amazed when I think that I can look back in history 20 million years just by viewing a star.

Stars have tremendous significance in our culture. We aspire to be stars in our own field of work and some aspire to earn a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. We shoot for the stars, they mysteriously fall from the sky, and sometimes, if you are very lucky, even love is written in them. Stars really are an unpredictable and incredible creation.

Sometimes as I walk this journey through Mid-Life and through a “maybe” divorce I look to the stars for answers. I look up and see both the shadows and light which seems to mimic the course my life is taking now. I realize that looking to the stars for answers sounds like something out of a child’s fairy tale. Comforting. Magical. And perhaps that is all it really is..one big illusion. Yet, I would like to think that the stars are lighting up and guiding me to the possibilities that lie within me…freeing me… from those black spaces so that I might get my sparkle back and shine brightly once more. And thinking this way gives me hope that someday I can be my own beacon for my children and that they might look at that light radiating outwards from me to help them find their own place in this world…wherever that may be.