Laid out in the back yard on the trampoline with the kids several nights in a row last week. There was a warm breeze and it felt pretty comfortable. We turned the lights off so they wouldn't distract us from the night sky. We were watching for shooting stars.This has become an annual tradition for us. Each summer, the earth passes through the tail of a comet and little pieces of rock burn and streak across the sky as they enter the atmosphere at 60 miles up traveling at 17 thousand miles per hour. It's called the Perseid Meteor Shower and it peaks around August 12th. So as that night approached, we laid outside and watched for them.
The first night, we only saw one meteor after lying there for about thirty minutes. But it got better each night and I saw eight on the night of the 12th. It's pretty neat to see them, but you have to really pay attention because they streak fast and you have to be watching.
None of that is the point, of course. The point is, I laid out on the trampoline with my teenage children. No TV, no video games, no cell phones, no mp3 players, no twittering, blogging, texting, emailing, no wifi or high speed internet, not even any dial-up. No telephone of any kind. No facebook, myspace, youtube, movies or radio. No satellite radio or satellite television. No rented movies or pay-for-view or netflix. Just us lying outside. Crickets were the only sound. The only sound, that is, other than our voices.
And our voices were low and calm. Everyone could talk about whatever they wanted. No one was lecturing or preaching or teaching. Well, there might have been a little teaching going on: I pointed out some of the constellations that I could remember. And I know the names of a few stars, so I pointed them out. I told them that the beautiful cross-shaped constellation that was straight above us is called Cygnus the Swan. I don't call it that, though, I call it the Northern Cross. It makes a perfect cross in the night sky. Astronomers may have given it its name before the cross became so significant, I don't know.
But again, my knowledge of a few star formations is not the point. The kids talked about their friends and their plans for the year. Some of it may have been a little silly. Maybe a giggle or two. But the point is, we laid out on the trampoline for a nice, long time.
We were watching the sky when what looked like a shooting star suddenly appeared. It flashed then blinked out. We thought for a second we were seeing a meteor, but then it blinked on again. It was a firefly flying overhead.
After a while, our eyes would get tired or we would get bored, and we would climb down and drift back into the house to the tsunami of technology that was waiting for us inside in the electricity. But it was nice for a while, and it was a memory. That's the kind of thing that keeps the lines of communication open between us old fogeys and our cool kids.
That's how we earn the right to pass our values on to our children. Take some down time with your kids. Find a way to smother the distractions and open the dialog. The kids will love you for it and you may just enjoy it yourself -- especially when a good shooting star streaks across and lights up the night sky.
