Yoshiwara

I Wish I May

"Hey! Come on! You'll miss it if you don't get a move on!"

I glanced back over my shoulder at my daughter. "What?" I asked, slightly irritated at the distraction.

"Have you forgotten?" My daughter stamped her foot with all the offended dignity a ten-year old could muster. "The shooting stars! You promised you'd come out and see them with us."

"Oh." I tried desperately to remember the promise, my thoughts still with the manuscript in front of me. I had been revising a particularly tricky passage - for some reason everything I did to it just made it worse - and realised that I had lost all track of self and time. I looked on the calendar that hung on the wall by my writing desk. There, in red ink, on today's date was the word 'Perseids'.

Of course!

I smiled at my daughter. "Give you daddy a minute to - ."

"No!" My daughter shot forward and slammed my notebook shut. I winced; not so much at the suddenness of her reaction, but more at the thought of the still-wet ink smearing and rendering illegible any changes I had made recently. I blinked and put my pen down on the inkstand.

"I do wish you wouldn't be so impatient," I began. "We'll be able to see the shooting stars tomorrow."

"No," my daughter repeated, tugging at my shirtsleeve. "Tonight! It has to be tonight!" I acquiesced to her, knowing I wouldn't get any peace otherwise. Not tonight, and probably not for the rest of the week. She dragged me out of the house and down the garden, to a spot by the bridge. the sky above was clear and there was enough light that, once my eyes had adjusted, I could see the rest of the family on the grass.

"Got him!" my daughter announced, as proudly as if she had caught and subdued some dangerous animal.

"Good," my wife said. "I didn't want you to miss this." She lay down on an old travelling rug that had been spread out on the grass. My son was already there, looking up at the stars. "Come on. Lie down." My wife patted a space next to her.

I knew when I was beaten. Obediently I lay down beside her, then felt my daughter snuggle up next to me.

My wife squeezed my hand. "Remember when we first did this? On that trip to see the eclipse?"

"Horrible day, that," I answered her. "There was too much cloud to see anything."

"But we saw the shadow. That was just as good."

"And the cloud went in the afternoon so we could see the meteors. Just like tonight."

I looked up at the sky, watching for the telltale streaks of light that marked the passage through the atmosphere of some piece of solar debris.

"Got one!" my son yelled. "I wish - !"

"Don't!" my daughter screamed. "You won't get it if you tell!"

"Remember what we wished for?" my wife whispered to me.

I smiled at the sky. "I do. And we got it."

Together, the four of us - my family - watched the darkness for more shooting stars.