Drawing the Constellations

So I’m young, I think sixth grade, I’m not sure why, but that’s what feels right. Seventh grade feels too late and fifth feels too early.

I was interested in space and astronomy. Mom had gotten me all sorts of books and magazines. I remember I wanted a telescope to really go out and look at stars, and I got a spyglass, like a modern version of what a pirate would use. And I was never really encouraged to go out and use it at night.

But I had this book, I think it was just a little golden book of constellations or astronomy or something. I had another book about astronomy from brown paper press that was much cooler, but was a little beyond me, but I think it inspired me for what I ended up doing. I think it prompted me to want to do something.

What I did was I got some loose-leaf notebook paper and a pencil, and I started drawing the constellations, and now I’m pushing this further back into the past, I think, because I didn’t have the desk, I did this on the large wooden corner table that was in my room as I was growing up, and later moved with me to Bloomington and Iowa City, even though by that point I was unaware of its connection to my past.

For some reason, this table was next to the window, which is not how I usually remember it being in my room, but I think there were a couple of different layouts. Anyway, I was at this table by the window at night with this book, my spyglass, and the paper and pencil, and I began to … draw my observations?

I think maybe I was trying to keep a notebook. I was trying to look at the stars from my bedroom window with the lights on in the room and of course I couldn’t see anything, and I think I was looking for a specific constellation. In my memory, I remember Bootes, Cassiopeia, and Orion. I think I was trying to use a star chart to figure out what I should be able to see outside my window, but when I wasn’t able to see anything, I started copying the constellations from the book to the paper. And then next to my illustration, I labelled it, and wrote some sort of note about it. I did this for five or six constellations across a couple of pieces of paper.

I remember at the time feeling like this was significant, that I had done something important, thought I’d be hard pressed to say what. The more I think about it, the younger I think I am, because I think the corner table was by the window before I got my desk when I was a kid, so maybe this is third grade? I think I got the desk going into fourth grade, when suddenly I had school work and homework.

I was old enough to write and draw, though, and I made these pages. I made them for myself, for no one else. That was neat, that meant something. I do remember some negative feelings about them, about how I hadn’t really done anything but copied stuff out of a book. That’s some pretty early internalized ableism, right there, when a nine-year-old is kicking himself for not contributing more to his scientific field of study. But I didn’t show them to anyone. That’s code for I didn’t show them to Mom.

Why did I feel so alive when I was making those pages? I think it’s because I wanted to “do astronomy” and I tried to do it and when I couldn’t, I fulfilled that desire by making something. And that felt really good.