Space on the Brain

Life with my son is out of this world.

Living in a house with a space-obsessed child puts a different spin on otherwise normal activities. We celebrate different "firsts" here. When my five-year-old son lost his first tooth on August 16, it was preceded by two days by an equally monumental occasion, witnessing his first meteor. Other firsts he has bagged: planetarium show, visiting NASA, seeing the moon through a telescope, seeing Jupiter's moons, seeings Saturn and its rings and Titan, seeing the space shuttle orbiting (with fireworks sharing the sky!), seeing the International Space Station.... The list goes on. We have also had the first time he has corrected me on something about space ("Capella is in Auriga, mom") and there have been plenty of times since then, too.

Every scrap of paper in our house becomes a canvas for sky maps. In crayon and marker he charts the course of the planets through the evening sky and constellations rising and setting. I have found receipts and instruction manuals left sitting on the counter with moon phases scrawled on the white space. Our driveway becomes a vast space tapestry in chalk in between the rains.

Most nights at the dinner table we play a game called "Which space object am I?" (It used to be called "Which planet am I?" but as my son's knowledge has grown we've had to expand the game.) Here are some typical sceanrios:

"I am a moon which is bigger than Pluto."

"I am the brightest star in Leo."

"I am the constellation that Venus is in right now."

At the supper table tonight my three-year-old daughter got to pick the game instead. She chose "I Spy". My son went first.

"I spy something that is super fast."

"Is it a plane?" his sister asked.

"Nope, but great guess," he said.

"Is it a motorcycle?" I guessed.

"No."

"Is it a comet?" his sister asked.

"No. A comet is slow in the outer solar system but it IS really fast when it gets close to the sun," he said.

We guessed about ten more things before it finally dawned on me.

"Is it light?" I asked.

"You got it!" he said.

Tonight as we were cleaning up toys before bed I couldn't find the state of New York in our puzzle of the United States. I asked if anyone had seen it. Sure enough, my son had mentally converted it into a space object and was pretending it was Cygnus the Swan. I guess it will go nicely with the plastic scorpion he has named Scorpius and the stuffed lizard he got last week named Lacerta.