The Big Dog

I used to walk to school every day, and as an obsessive Virgo my whole life, I always made a point to arrive early, even after kicking a rock the whole way (which was not easy down those stairs and through that tunnel under the Long Island Rail Road tracks).

In the dead of winter, we'd line the hallways with our snow-covered boots and they'd drip into puddles until the whole hallway was a bit of a sloshy mess. Our gloves and hats and scarves would lay across the radiators in the classroom, crusting up with hardness and cracking when we again put them on. But getting to school early meant I would be the only person in the hall, and I loved the quiet and stillness of that time of the day. Still do.

When I was in third grade, I got to enjoy an extra treat, because my teacher would display a famous poem on a door-sized piece of butcher paper, which she would change each month (which was as good as Christmas to me). I would stand in the hall in my wet boots, alone and happy, and memorize it.

And so, it is with great joy that I walk my children into each of their schools. And every so often, I see something new in the hallway that makes me stand there, gape-mouthed with wonder, as if I were back at Corpus Christi School in Mineola again. And the other day, this was it. Simple sheets of black construction paper, on which children had stuck those little gold star stickers and used chalk lines to connect them to form the constellations. Each star had a hole poked in it, and through it were Christmas lights that connected down the line, from constellation to constellation.

My daughter's teacher, seeing me standing there and perhaps recognizing the little girl in me, took the plug from the lights, which was dangling near the door, and plugged it in just inside the classroom. As Canis Major and the others came to life, it literally took my breath away.

The bell now rung, children poured down the hall. If we had been up North, it would only have been moments until the Boot Puddle formed. One after another, the children stopped short and gasped along with me. They pointed. They grabbed their friends to show them. They oohed and aahed.

My daughter's teacher smiled broadly beneath her glasses. Because, after 42 years of teaching, she knows. The lights are not just going on for those constellations. The lights are going on--and staying on--inside these children. With or without boots.

Canis Major is the Big Dog in the Sky, who follows the hunter Orion. The brightest star in the sky, Sirius, forms its nose. The three main stars of Canis Major are called The Winter Triangle in the Northern Hemisphere, and the Summer Triangle in the Southern Hemisphere (another shout-out to my friends in Australia here!)

As a special gift to my daughter's teacher, my third grade teacher, and teachers and poem-lovers everywhere, I share with you this poem by Robert Frost:

Canis Major

The great Overdog
That heavenly beast
With a star in one eye
Gives a leap in the east.
He dances upright
All the way to the west
And never once drops
On his forefeet to rest.
I'm a poor underdog,
But to-night I will bark
With the great Overdog
That romps through the dark.

--by Robert Frost

For us Northern Hemisphere folks, the dead of winter may have us huddling inside more. But this poem reminds me to head on outside on a starry night. And look up. Because even though many of us are celebrating holidays punctuated by lights and candles right now, I am humbled by the great show of lights that happens each night in the sky, which we can all enjoy together, whatever it is we celebrate and wherever we are.

But right now, I have something special to do, something I should have started doing a long time ago.

And, yes, it involves butcher paper and a fat magic marker.

The Big Dog