Sleeping With Orion || L.E. Duchin

I’m not good at holding still. I was born early. From that moment on, I have always been in a hurry to – I don’t know –  just get to the next thing, or place, or event or whatever will keep me going. Maybe there’s an extra set of instructions in my genes that keeps me on fast-forward. Maybe it’s because I was born in the predawn with Mercury rising. Mercury. The fastest of the planets and Roman gods, he is referred to as the winged god of speed. 

Even as a kid, my naps were always quick. I never fussed about taking a rest, falling asleep instantly, into what must have been very deep slumber. Intense and short. I remember crying for someone to come get me. Once I could speak I apparently stood up in my crib and called out,

“Get me outta here!”

“You’re awake already?” my tired mother would say.

 It’s the going, the moving, the pursuit, the hunt for me. Hunting for what? I have no idea.

In pursuit of ice cream, my family would hit the drive-through and eat our cones in the car. Even though I had seen the consequences of hurrying, I licked the fastest while actually biting chunks of the treat. When I started in on the cone, I crunched off the bottom point first, working upward to catch the dripping chocolate pouring down the hole. It was a race. 

I loved that I had to act fast before the drippings ran down my hand and arm onto the seat. The ice cream always beat me. And I got in trouble for the mess.

Reprimands for hurrying also came from teachers. In first-grade reading group, I silently read ahead. But that meant that when it was my turn to read aloud, I never knew where to pick up the story.  Ms. Olson thought I was lost because I couldn’t follow the words. 

Well, she was right. I couldn’t slow down for each student’s turn because the stories were always too boring. I read on and on with the foolish belief that eventually the story would get interesting. Yeah, right.

I loved music, especially Allegro or faster. When I was seven, my piano teacher said,

“You’re a very fast learner, dear, but you need to play more carefully. Look at the tempo. You don’t have to play as fast as you can.”

Much later, I realized what she meant. When I heard others sing or play, the music woke up. It was alive. Powerful. I could feel it in my whole body. It was all about tempo. It was about pacing. Something that was never evident in my performances. I couldn’t seem to play like that. Why wasn’t there a reset button inside me? Was it possible to lower my tempo to andante or moderato?    

In college, friends would get angry with me for interrupting their studies to ask them to come out to play. 

“Let’s go to the movies,” I’d say, just about jumping out of my skin. 

Their replies were always something like,

“Are you kidding? What about the paper that’s due tomorrow?!”  

Or the test, presentation, book report, term project, or whatever they hadn’t finished. Initially, it was probably just irritation at my barging in with way too much enthusiasm during a serious night of last-minute cramming and panic. But now I think that the actual resentment and the following fury’s foundation stemmed from my answer to their question:

“I’ve done it already.” 

Later that year I found Anne. She was always ready to go to a movie or on a hike. There was really nothing else to do in the small college town. I was in awe of her cleverness, and her amazing ability to recite whole poems and speeches by heart. Her Shakespeare sonnets were pretty impressive, especially since she accompanied it with tap dancing. But knowing all the verses to that favorite of high school teachers, Evangeline?  I just couldn’t believe it! That poem goes on forever! She became my idol and my best friend immediately.

Anne and I both had seasonal part-time jobs in the farm factories. When they needed extra help packing peas, potatoes, beans, carrots, onions or asparagus, their requests went out over the radio. Until the crops of the day arrived, we never knew when we’d be needed. Putting it in the local paper would be too late, and most part-timers were students with no phone numbers. Yes, Virginia, there was a time when telephones were hooked to the wall. Most homes had one, but dormitory rooms did not. So we had to check the radio early in the day to listen for the ‘Report for Work’ announcements.  

“Spuds, room 3,”  “sweets, room 1,”  “asps, room 7,”……. I would spread the word to others in the dorm who, unlike me, were not anxious to jump out of bed at the first hint of dawn. 

“Hurry,” I’d knock on the appropriate doors, “spuds, sweets and asps, let’s get going!”

Once on a free Saturday, Anne asked me if I’d like to go on a bike ride through the countryside and have a picnic. She had also invited a guy from our group of friends. We rode through narrow country lanes, out past large fields of wheat, corn, potatoes, onions and asparagus. 

We went past huge pastures of cows, sheep and goats, where we broke into our fastest pace, hoping to get past the aromas. It’s hard to hold your nose on a bike. We pedaled up a long hill to a view-point of the whole valley. I was always in the lead, going at full speed. They may have been going slower in order to continue their conversation, or maybe just because it was a steep hill. 

At the vista, we walked around, and found a fine grassy spot for our lunch. We talked about the meaning of life, the scenery, and our favorite subject. It was astronomy. We were all in the same class and, of course, Anne knew all the constellations. We then rated all the professors, the most important courses, and where the best parties were that weekend.       

But soon the conversation between Anne and Jim moved to a two-way personal questioning on a frequency I wasn’t supposed to hear. It turned into a ‘let’s get to know each other’s every thought, idea, and, of course, feeling. And while we’re at it, let’s play with each other’s hair, and caress arms.’  

How did I not see this coming? I wandered around the hilltop, enjoying flowers, weeds, bugs and dirt for as long as I could stand it. I sat for a while. I got up and paced. I sat back down with an extra loud sigh, thinking the whole time, ‘why don’t they just get a room?’ 

Actually I was wondering if they were thinking that if I wasn’t there, they could’ve just done it all afternoon in the grass. So I walked meaningfully back to them and said, 

“I think we should head back,” meaning ‘let’s get going! You both have single rooms!’  

They ignored me, so I sat down right next to them. Yes, I was hoping to bug them. Then I got back up, faced them and said,

 “OK, time to go, I’ll bring your bikes over.”  

After a long while, my messages (obviously moving more slowly than the speed of sound) found their private frequency, went past their hammers, anvils, and stirrups and reverberated on the tympanic membranes in their ears. The connecting nerves for sound finally reached their brains and broke the lovers’ bubble of ‘the world around us is gone, and we, alone, exist!’ When they eventually looked up at me, Jim said, 

“Were you born early!?”

Several years later, in Mexico, a friend and I camped on an isolated beach. We had ended up in a deserted area outside a tiny one-street town with no hotels. We were on a year-long trip with no schedule and a very loose idea of where we wanted to go. We slept on the sand just up from the shore, below a tall ridge of rock under the stars. The sound of the waves was rhythmic and soothing. It was beautiful and relaxing, but I was antsy. I even slept restlessly. I had plenty of time, with endless months of adventure ahead of me, and still, I tossed and turned. 

I rolled onto my back to look at the infinity of stars against the clearest black sky ever! I found all the easy constellations, but thought of Anne when so many extra stars at different distances and layers of depth, stumped me. Then, coming up over the ocean, Orion appeared! It was the brightest and most complete set of its stars I had ever seen. 

In astronomy class we had studied the lines of the constellations drawn in to outline the shapes that made the figures. Ok, I get the big dipper, but Cassiopeia on her throne? Really? I could barely see it with the lines much less in the real sky. Anne and I had decided that those ancient guys must have been high, though not in the sky. 

But suddenly on Baja, I could see Orion’s outfit, his legs, and his arm with the sword raised above his head. It was great! I stared at it for quite a while, but realized that I had to get some sleep so we could get going in the morning. I closed my eyes, trying to clear my mind -what a joke- and tossed and turned again. 

I watched Orion as it moved so slowly across the sky. I’d close my eyes for a long time and then check on Orion to see if time had passed. Hardly a few minutes. I sighed deeply and closed my eyes again. I lay awake all night and watched the incredibly slow pace of Orion across the sky, as he marked the hours until I could finally get up and go. 

Orion! Hey there, hunter, come on, go hunt! Go! Pursue! Hustle up! Get going! Move it!

Years later, with a solid career, and a partner, I had a daughter. We were older than most of our friends when they had kids. In fact we were the very last ones. I had been too hyper and restless to settle down for parenting. I saw friends racing around with their toddlers, but they never seemed to be going anywhere. While they had plenty of energy to keep up with their kids, I thought they were just frustrated and exhausted. 

We knew there wasn’t one best time for kids, so we just watched and avoided a lot of the conflict and pitfalls by learning from their experiences. The one thing we didn’t quite understand was their oft repeated complaint that ‘Oh, they grow up too fast.’

One summer, we took our young daughter on her first camping trip. We were on an isolated beach in the San Juan Islands of Washington State. I saw Orion rise as I helped our little girl choose sticks and branches for our fire. I showed her how to carefully place each piece just so, on top of the crumpled paper, with space in between to let the air breathe on the fire. 

We put the safety bucket of water near us, in the sand, and I lit the match on the underlying paper and on one long skinny stick. I gave her the stick, we held it together, and lit another piece of paper. All the little sticks started burning, and the fire was going. In the firelight I could see her beaming face of pride, joy, and wonder. 

We toasted marshmallows and made s’mores. The fire burned lower, until it was time for P.J.’s. I pushed the glowing embers apart, and carefully poured the water until the fire was completely out. We could see all the stars. I noticed how far Orion had moved.  

Oh mighty Orion, slow down! What’s your hurry? You don’t need to keep hunting. Relax. Look! We’re right down here enjoying your twinkling stars. Please. Stay and snuggle with us. We’ve got all night.