That We Might See

I wanted to see the comet.

I heard about the once-in-a-lifetime appearance of Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS just after it appeared: there was a photo posted on Facebook, of the comet lined up beautifully with the lake I missed swimming in for so many months this summer, while trying to replace our ruined car. It felt like a cruel joke that I’d missed the comet as well.

I have always wanted to see things. It’s never enough just to hear or read about them; I have to see.

When I was a very little girl, in the late 80s and early 90s when going to space and becoming an astronaut were the faddish thing for every child to want, I didn’t exactly want to go to space. I knew that “going to space” didn’t mean that I would really go to space; going to space would mean bouncing around a can of air that probably smelled bad, with a crew of people who might not like me, and not even being able to open the windows and look out. That was the opposite of space. I wanted to somehow be alive and conscious and not suffering, in space, unhampered by a clumsy astronaut’s suit, swimming among the stars. I longed to walk around on Mars with a good winter coat and smell the air to see if it smelled like rust. I wanted to stand on the surface of Venus without burning to death, and hold up a plate of ice cream, so I could see if it was really true that not only the ice cream but the glass plate would bubble and melt in my hands. I longed to somehow lie down on the surface of Jupiter, which is impossible because Jupiter is all gas and doesn’t exactly have a surface, and gaze up at the perpetual hurricane that makes the red spot.

My heart broke when I realized I had missed a comet.

And then I found out that the comet was not only visible for one night. The best two days to see it were still ahead, Tuesday and Wednesday, but it would be here in earth’s orbit until late in the month– indeed, it might be easier to see when it was further away, because it would be higher away from the horizon.

On Tuesday night, I wanted to look for the comet, but it was very cloudy.

On Wednesday, it rained all day and into the evening. There was a tiny break in the clouds at nightfall, and I drove Adrienne out to the overlook at Fernwood State Forest, my favorite stargazing spot. But by the time we got there, the hole in the clouds was closing– and I realized when I pulled out the compass that I’d planned everything wrong. The overlook faced north, east and a bit to the west. To see the comet, you had to be facing west-southwest. It was just out of sight behind an outcropping covered in tall trees.

The next day, the news said you’d be able to see the comet with the naked eye right in the middle of the city, because it was higher up. I was excited. I told Adrienne as I dropped her off for school that we’d be able to stargaze right in LaBelle that evening without a road trip, and she was excited too. The weather was crisp and perfectly clear. Everything was going to go right.

We went outside at 7:20 in the evening. We turned our backs to the great gold supermoon rising over West Virginia, to the east of us. We used the compass to make sure we were facing west-southwest. We found Venus hanging low in the sky by the water tower.

The water tower was in the way of the comet.

We walked to the next block. There was Venus, but a house was in the way.

Everywhere we went, a house or a tree or a street lamp was in the way.

Next thing I knew we were in Sacre Bleu the new-old Nissan, driving up the main arterial that is risibly called Sunset Boulevard. I felt myself panicking as if there was some terrible emergency. The comet was only visible for about two hours before it set for the night. It would be almost too dim to see tomorrow and gone by the end of the month. But every single overlook I could think of faced east. When you live on the shale cliffs overlooking the Ohio river, all the hills with good views face east. I needed a place to look west-southwest, and not be staring at a hillside.

We drove up in the well-to-do neighborhoods near the hospital, trying to find a vantage point at the top of a hill, but there was none. All the houses had porch lights and decorative yard lights that were far too bright. We couldn’t see anything in the sky at all.

Venus set, and still we hadn’t found the comet.

I found myself praying, “Lord, that I might see.”

I don’t know why that’s the Bible verse that came to me, but I said it again and again.

I found myself wondering if, raised in the Charismatic Renewal, drip fed on the constant adrenaline of Marian apparitions, miraculous healings, signs and wonders, stigmatists and terrifying doomsday prophesies, I’d learned to treat my religious practice like my longing to see the comet. Not accepting that God was there suffering quietly with me, but demanding that God put on a show for my entertainment. Not living my life, as myself, in God, but desperate to be dazzled and amazed by a God who did magic tricks. Always searching for that precious Mountaintop Experience and never quite finding the right vantage point. Disappointed again and again, because God doesn’t usually work that way.

Maybe God was trying to discipline me by not letting me see the comet.

Maybe I was supposed to go home to bed, trusting that the comet was there, joyful on behalf of the people who had gotten to see it, knowing that signs and wonders were not for me.

Who was that saint who was told that the Eucharist had turned into a baby Jesus standing on the altar, really visible as a human being for all to see, and had refused to go to the chapel and look but said “Blessed are they who have not seen and believed?” Maybe I was supposed to say that about the comet.

Or, maybe I just wasn’t good enough to see.

Maybe God never lets me see the things I long for, because He doesn’t love me and hasn’t chosen me. Maybe I’m not important.

For a moment, I wanted to slap God in the face. Just once, couldn’t I have a mountaintop experience? Couldn’t I see the thing I came out to see instead of being stuck in the darkness staring at something else? Just the tiniest little sign that He loves me and wants me to have something nice?

I found myself driving back to my neighborhood.

We parked in the vacant lot next to the Protestant church, the place where we used to fly kites. The supermoon was behind me, behind the church’s steeple. That nuisance of a water tower was to my right.

I looked over to where Venus had been, before it disappeared. I looked to the right of it and up, west-southwest, shimmying around until the compass told me I was just right. Beside Ms. B’s house. Up above the roof of that pretty white house I always wanted to own.

There was a tiny white pinprick, brighter and a little larger than the other pinpricks, up above the light pollution from the porches and the street lamps.

“I found it,” I said.

Adrienne gazed in the direction I pointed, and for a long time we said nothing.

The comet didn’t look much different than an ordinary star. It wasn’t a great big streak of light like the one that appeared at the lake days ago. It was just a tiny speck in the darkness. I held up my phone and took two pictures in Night Mode, one of them zoomed way in.

In the photo, I could see the tail of the comet just a bit. I couldn’t see that with just my eyes, but it was there. I hadn’t been tricked. This wasn’t a star. It was a great big ball of filthy ice flying sixty million miles from earth. I had seen and photographed a thing that no human eye will see again for eighty thousand years.

We went back home and had our dinner late, and life went on as it had before.

Sometimes, the beautiful thing you’ve longed for is revealed to you.

Sometimes, when you seek, you find.

Sometimes, when you are so fed up you’re ready to fight God, God brings you to the vantage point you wanted, just for a little while.

Lord, that I might see.