Time is precious, but know that truth is more precious than time.
Did you ever wish upon a shooting star? Did your wish come true? Witnessing a shooting star as it fires across the sky is a rare and special event. It has been said to be a signal that a major life change is about to happen. For Brad, a fifty-year-old happily married man, and Mackenzie, a cute and quirky twenty-four-year-old who goes by Mack, a major life change is exactly what did happen. Their innocent beginnings evolve into a spiritual journey that takes them down a complicated path that leads them into uncharted territory. Pushing the boundaries of love and friendship, they challenge societal expectations with only their heart’s justification. Through their own experiences, they see life and the world from two unique perspectives; his from introspect, hers from family. They are both seeking the meaning of life. Their complex relationship begins to blend into discovering their truths, for themselves and each other. When the excitement of hope is within their reach, the universe unleashes new trauma into play that changes everything and deeply question those truths.
Happy birthday to me. It was March 26 and I was experiencing the annual ritual of the birthday celebration. That involved dinner at Red Lobster with my family and eight waitresses (covering all the keys) singing “Happy Birthday.” I hated when that happened. That year was particularly distressing because it was the big “five-oh.” Everybody was thoroughly enjoying themselves with the endless number of what they believed to be the most hilarious and creative gifts ever given. You know—black balloons, adult diapers, a walking cane, and so forth and so forth. Oh yeah, there was the membership to AARP and then asking the waitress if we can use it for a discount. You get the picture. My wish when I was blowing out the candles was that this would just all be over, but I knew full well that wasn’t going to come true; birthday wishes never do. There was the wish for a puppy when I was ten and a new Camaro when I was fourteen. Of course, I knew I couldn’t drive until I was sixteen, but I thought that would give the birthday-wish gods some time to work on it. After that I asked for more important things, like passing algebra or going to prom with Olivia Newton-John. I would have even settled for my second choice, Lori Lee, the cutest girl at my school. Nope, I did not even get my third choice, whoever that was. After that I decided that birthday wishes never came true. But wishing on a shooting star, well that’s another story.
I was nineteen when a friend of mine asked me to go to Colorado for a “guys’ journey” into the wilderness. I had never been out of the state of Illinois and it was a great excuse to get out of work, so I said sure. My friend was several years older than I was but that didn’t really seem to matter. We met while we were in a junior bowling league. We got to talking and found out that we both played the guitar. Well, at least I liked to tell people I played the guitar, but that was kind of a stretch. My friend could play and sing, and I could hold my guitar and stand next to him to provide some moral support. We played in a church group and performed at things like weddings or when someone wanted entertainment for free. It was the seventies and John Denver was our hero. He sang about “Rocky Mountain High,” so Colorado was the place for us to go.
We decided to reach for the summit of the most hallowed grounds of Rocky Mountain splendor: Aspen, Colorado. This was home to many of the most famous celebrities and of course, John Denver himself. We arrived on a beautiful afternoon in late August. We ended up at the town park and met a guy playing his guitar. His name was John, but unfortunately his last name was not Denver. He wasn’t any better than we were so we asked if we could join him for a summer afternoon jam session. We played until about dinnertime and then we all decided to take a walk around town and find a place to eat. As we strolled through town, it seemed that every street corner boasted guitar players performing their greatest hits. So, after we found a place to eat (that we could afford), we were all talking about how great it would be to spend our lives playing guitar in this Rocky Mountain paradise.
Then someone came up with a great idea—or at least we thought so at the time. Why didn’t we find a street corner and pull out our “getfiddles” and do a show of our own? After all, we had rehearsed for at least an hour, so we should be ready to make our national debut. We had our roadies (us) unload, tune up our instruments, and open the guitar cases to collect our revenue. The management team (again, us) huddled together to discuss our song list and in what order we would perform the six songs we knew. The crowd of one was getting restless, so we stepped onto the stage (literally on the front step of the laundromat). We’d hit the big time! About forty-five minutes later, and more people than we could count on one hand, the crowds finally started to disperse after we completed our sixth encore (we went through our song list twice). We had collected enough cash to buy a case of Coors beer, the champagne of beers west of the Mississippi River.
As we were walking back to our “tour bus,” we noticed a crowd—I am sure it was overflow from our performance—had gathered in the center of town. When we looked closer, we saw a pretty girl playing the guitar. For the sake of our art we thought we should give this a closer look. She was quite a good performer. She was good enough to have been our opening act. She captured our attention and kept us there for quite some time. She said she was performing to raise money for her friend who was in the hospital with cancer. The friend’s family needed help to cover the bills. Not only was this girl gorgeous — she was also altruistic.
What happened next was something I would never forget; during the next song, my friend took off his cowboy hat and passed it through the crowd. Everybody was putting their contribution into the hat. I couldn’t help it; I had to contribute most of our earnings for the night but still make sure we still had enough money for the beer. He handed the hat to the girl and she began to cry and simply said, “Thank you.” But it wasn’t just the words she said. I really could feel her appreciation for this kind act; it was a feeling I would never forget.
By this time, it was starting to get dark and we had no place to stay (that we could afford). So, we did what we came to Colorado to do in the first place: we went camping. We drove several miles out of town and just pulled off to the side of the road. We grabbed our gear and started walking into the night woods. We walked for what felt like an hour but was probably closer to ten minutes. We came to a clearing that was big enough for us to set up camp in and staked our claim. None of us felt like setting up the tents, most likely because there was no light to read the instructions by, so we just built a campfire and cracked open our case of beer. We talked for a while and the campfire was slowly dwindling, but no one seemed eager to go hunting for more wood. That was when our new friend pulled out a cigarette, or so I thought. After further investigation, I realized it definitely was not a cigarette, or at least not like the ones my dad smoked. In keeping with the mission of this trip being the rite of passage into adulthood, I felt it was my duty to continue my education.
The campfire burned itself out and all was quiet, except for the sound of a mountain stream off in the distance. The air was crisp, but not cold, and felt good. I was lying there thinking about how perfect the moment was. I had never seen so many stars up in the sky. As a kid I used to lie on our back porch and look at the stars and dream. I would dream about my future: wife, kids, job, house, and just about everything else, wondering what was ahead for me. And then I saw something. It was a flash that flew across the Colorado sky. It was a shooting star, one like I had never seen before. I was in a bit of awe, then suddenly, I remembered that you’re supposed to make a wish when you see a shooting star. So, I made my wish.
But before I could finish, there was another shooting star, and another and another. I thought to myself that this enhanced cigarette was some pretty good stuff. Was this the “Rocky Mountain High” that John Denver sang about? The shooting stars continued to flash across the sky. I started to count them. After five minutes I had counted nineteen. At that point, I decided to just lie back and enjoy the spectacle. I never went to sleep that night. I was making a lot of wishes, but would any of them come true? Then, my thoughts flashed back to the girl singing in the town square earlier that night. I did something I had never done before: I wished for her wish to come true. I made the wish with a deep and sincere desire to see it manifest. This was unlike any of my previous wishes where I was seeking a prize like you get in the bottom of the Cracker Jack box. This felt amazingly good like I had never felt that way about any of my other wishes. Would it come true? I would just have to wait and see, or would I ever know?
As the years passed, many of the wishes I made that night did come true. I got the job I wanted. I was making good money and could afford the car I wanted. It wasn’t a Camaro, though; it was a Honda. I met Emily, a wonderful woman with whom I fell in love and got married. I’d never made any wishes about having kids. I wasn’t especially sure about that until my wife thought she was pregnant. I wished really hard, and it came true—she wasn’t! Everything that I wished for seemed to be happening. But I never knew if that Colorado girl’s wish had ever come true. I never stopped thinking about it though.
I continued to make wishes whenever I saw a shooting star. After my experience camping in Colorado, I researched to see if I could find out what was behind all the shooting stars. I learned it was a meteor shower—the Perseid meteor shower, to be exact. It occurs every August. I made a pilgrimage every year to go to a place that was as far away from the city lights as I could find to watch the event. I even tried that special place in Colorado to relive that first time.
I learned why people say you can never repeat experiences like that. First, there was no way I was ever going to find that place somewhere in the mountains near Aspen that had a mountain stream nearby. And second, when you plan something like that, you need to check the calendar to see if there is going to be a full moon at the time. You should do this before you plan a whole vacation and spend lots of money. And I guess there is a third thing. I didn’t know where the mysterious guy who was our band mate was and where he got his special cigarettes. I tried camping a few times with my wife, but I could never recapture anything close to that experience to share with her. Plus, my wife could not quite get the joy of camping when there were plenty of good (or even bad) hotel rooms available.
After I met Emily, I started bringing her with me to share the amazement of this event. It became something like a scheduled holiday; you know, like Christmas or Black Friday. Every year, you get up at four in the morning the day after Thanksgiving to fight with hundreds of other holiday shoppers to spend thousands of dollars on great deals that you didn’t take advantage of when there were even better deals before this shopping day. Emily was never really able to connect the joy of the two. At first, I think she thought it was somewhat of a romantic adventure, but like many things in a marriage it tended to fade after time for her. Eventually it became a “me-time” getaway. Emily was just fine with that. I think she enjoyed having a “her-time” getaway, too.
When she stopped going with me, the experience began to change. Or maybe “evolve” is more accurate. This quiet time was causing me to become more reflective and introspective. My wishes were becoming less about things and more about answers. And each year the questions I had were becoming deeper and deeper—about things like God, religion, relationships, love, joyfulness, and what “peace” really was. The whole experience was becoming very intense and seemed to be rapidly expanding. My time was becoming more meditative, prayer-like. I decided to start journaling these events just so I could remember everything: my questions, thoughts, and desires, and also, the journey I was on.
There was a weekly television show at the time called Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. One of the main characters was a man named Sully. He was a man of the wilderness, like Jeremiah Johnson, who lived off the land. Much like I did on that trip to Colorado with my friend. Sully was a friend of the Cheyenne in Colorado and spent time learning and understanding their ways. One of the things he learned and practiced was going out into the wilderness alone, without any provisions. On his journey he would stop at a place where he would outline a circle and sit in the middle. This is where he would sit, pray, and meditate for days without any food or water. He would sit there no matter the weather, and would stay until the gods gave him guidance or a vision. It was called a “vision quest.” This was now the label I used for my trips to watch the stars. Of course, I would still be taking my traditional beer with me on my quests. At some time, I added popcorn to the tradition. You can’t watch a good show without popcorn and beer!