Nancy Huggett
The Perseids
Winner of the 2023 American Literary Review Essay Contest, Judged by Kendra Vanderlip
The night of her first major stroke, we stay up to watch the Perseids. We scoot out the cottage door in Maine with blankets and pillows, hear it screech bounce slam behind us. Our bare feet on cold concrete, one step down into the night dew. My daughter Jessie laughing as I wrangle the beach chairs into the dark puddle of night between the houses, our yearly August ritual since her elementary school years, still bonding us in her late 20s. The fullness of the ocean sky lies above us—a moonless depth of darkness salted with diamonds. We trail our fingers in the damp grass, hum songs to keep the skunks away, and stare up at the stars that begin to flash between the constellations we have practiced naming yearly. The sky a sudden explosion of splintering light, our fingers entwined, holding on to each other and the earth. Laughing at the stars as they streak across the night sky. One last flicker of lighthearted entanglement before the heavens turn.
*
Shooting stars are not really stars at all—they are meteors. Streams of cosmic rubble spewing behind a comet as it orbits the sun. When Earth passes through these dusty trails, the debris disintegrates in its atmosphere, leaving streaks of vaporized gases and glowing molecules, fiery flashes that scratch the sky with brightness. Each year, more than 30 meteor showers are visible as Earth passes through the scattering of comet dust. The Ursids, the Geminids, the Beta Taurids, the Leonids, and the most visible and prolific, with 50 to 100 meteors cascading hourly through the darkness, the Perseids.
*
The first time Jessie watched the Perseids her mouth formed a perfect little ohhhhh of awe as she saw the expanse of the universe and the star-sparkled sky domed above our heads. We were camping at Silver Lake near our home in Ottawa. I held her pudgy toddler hand to steady her as we followed the dark path through the woods to the wide-open expanse of the beach. As the first meteoroid streaked across the velvety sky, her quick intake of breath at the wonder of the flash and fade of comet dust made me marvel at this gift of parenting, of showing a burgeoning being her first glimpse of the expanse of this wondrous universe to which we all belong. Jessie and I and a log and the wide-open sky of fireballs rushing past us as we hurtled through space, through the cosmic dust that fell around us. Her toddler voice, an octave higher than her adult voice and squeaky—consonants slurred, shortened versions of every word, saying and signing star, star, star, expanding and stretching her arms to hold the whole universe, in imitation of what she was seeing. Silver Lake and silver streaks in the sky and us cuddled and coddled beneath the deep velvet darkness of it. The cold, breathless beauty.
*
I grip Jessie’s hand as she slips into the cold MRI machine, trying to let her know that I will not let go. Terrorized by the restraints, by her loss of words, by tongue and mouth and brain not connecting, by the clanging and whirring around her head, she squeezes my hand and pleads with her eyes: Make it stop. My own helpless nightmare: standing under the weight of a lead gown, cheek pressed against the cold MRI, its deafening mechanical whine vibrating through my jaw. I clutch her hand as her body slides away into darkness. I breathe my determined calm through the flesh that binds us, hand-to-hand, palm-to-palm. I soak in her terror, inhale it through my skin, cleanse it with my heart and lungs, and send it back to her, calm. I am here. I am always here. My legs begin to buckle as I count and release a prayer with each breath.
The MRI spins round and round, orbiting her brain, time speeded and contained in a medical universe cool to the touch. Its magnetic field realigns the water molecules in her body so they send out faint signals that map the constellation of her brain. Ocean, sky, time turned in on itself, her expanding universe shrinks to this whirring circle of magnets foretelling her future while I tether her limpid form to earth.
*
Each meteor shower trails behind its own parent comet. Some named, some numbered, some undiscovered. The Orionids are from Halley’s comet, the Arietids from Icarus, the Lyrids from C/1861 G1. The Perseids are fragments of the comet Swift-Tuttle, which orbits between the Sun and Pluto once every 133 years. Every year, as Earth passes through its debris, it offers up one of the brightest and best-known meteor showers.
*
In grade 5, Jessie fell in love with the night sky and the constellations, all named after mythological characters. All with a story. That year we traveled to the cottage on the coast of Maine with a Tupperware box full of astronomy books and a laminated guide to the night sky. We planned a late-night foray to Laudholm Farm—where we ventured every year to learn something new about the coast, the wetlands, the saltmarsh, the sky—for a star-gazing party.
We parked in the small lot and walked up the pebbled path with the other stargazers toward the half-ton parked in the middle of the field. A massive portable telescope jutted out the tailgate toward the sky like a weapon that both frightened and intrigued us. As the astronomer oriented us toward the heavens, Jessie whispered the constellations, having already practiced in the pool of darkness between the beach houses, the full skid of the Milky Way scratched across the sky. Big and Little Dippers, Orion, Cassiopeia, Hercules, both bears—major and minor. We took turns scrambling up, looking through the telescope and naming each of the planets and stars as they came into full focus through the lens.
In Maine, we learn to name things. To pay attention. Not just that star, this crab, that shell, but: Jupiter, Saturn, rock crab, moon snail, waved whelk, limpet. We balance periwinkles in the palm of our hands and hum them out of their shells.
*
The ER doctors huddle around the image pulled up on the large screen that reveals the tell-tale “puff-of-smoke” marker. A tangle of tiny blood vessels billowing out of the internal carotid artery, a dark constellation in the bright sky of her brain. The radiologist is excited. I imagine it is like spotting a rare star, a planet, a comet that only comes around every millennium. It is a rareness named. Moyamoya. Japanese for puff of smoke, caused by the formation of collateral blood vessels that form a loose net spun out from the obstruction of the internal carotid arteries supplying blood to the brain. Her body’s attempt to pulse oxygen and life into a thirsty organ. But it is not enough. And our galaxy is falling in on itself, a dark hole sucking memory, movement, words into nothingness. “Her name is Jessie,” I say. To the doctors, to myself. Helpless to stop this cosmic collapse.
*
Each meteor shower is named after its radiant—the point in the sky from which it appears. The Perseids radiate from the constellation Perseus. Perseus the Greek god who slayed the only mortal Gorgon, Medusa, whose hair was a mass of writhing venomous snakes, whose deadly gaze turned people to stone. In a bit of trickery using his shield for a mirror, he crept into her cave while she was sleeping and cut off her head.
*
A surgeon saws through Jessie’s cranium and lays two arteries from her scalp gently across the surface of her brain and stitches them in place. Then closes bone and skin and staples a streak across each temple that will be his permanent signature on her body. He is a gentle and funny man. Brilliant in his field. When a post-surgery stroke almost steals her from us, he fights to keep her here, delicately balancing the ratio of rest to stimulation to guide her back. The nurses keep gentle and watchful guard as she emerges from the darkness. She both is and is not herself. Her eyes unfocused, she wonders who we are. Then remembers in short bursts with bits of songs and movies that trigger a synaptic fizz of familiarity. Her hands clap in delight then tip over into mania as she pulls the lines that keep her tethered to this world. She has lost her friends, her past, her sense of place and time. We strain, exhausted, to hold and frame her self, so she does not scatter in shards across the cold linoleum hospital floor. We sing and dance to make her drink and trick her into eating, which she does not remember how to do unless she does not think it. We print photos from our phones and make albums of her past, and point, and teach her to read her life all over again. This is Rachel, your best friend from elementary school. Here is Grams, your grandmother; you love her hotdogs and visiting her in Montreal and at the beach. This is Liz, you dance with her in Propulsion Dance. Here is your dance family; you have performed across the country with them. We start close in. Name blood family, chosen family, friends, familiars. Construct a field guide for her fractured brain.
*
The best-known star in the Persei cluster is Algol, the Demon Star. Linked to Medusa in skylore, it’s known for its variability, waxing and waning in brightness like clockwork, completing one cycle in two days, 20 hours, and 49 minutes. It is an eclipsing binary star, composed of two stars, each star revolving around the other.
*
Sometimes she calls herself Pamela, with a British accent. And so must we. Other times its Ursula, when she is feeling particularly nasty, or Betty when she is feeling beautiful. Her names are what she can control, what she chooses, what she tries on for size to fit an emotion, to give her power. She has lost so much. We barely know her. And yet. There are incontestable shinings and new synapses that weave a net that holds her in this present moment. Thin filaments of desire and memory that loop her back into her life before—of dancing on a stage, speaking to a crowd, shopping for a dress, meeting friends for tea—and pull her into an uncertain future that we must co-create. We are linked now, more than we can fathom. Dependent now, more than we had planned. The demands of caregiving preclude any time or space to grieve such ambiguous and uncertain loss. We teach sequences and the daily tasks of living. We hold the overload at bay by closing blinds, muting phones, planning simple outings and meals. We trust the calmness of others to blanket her movement through the day, to give her brain a chance to heal, to settle, to find its place in her universe. Who is she now? Still becoming through the fog. We call her Jessie. Jessie is what she mostly calls herself. Jessie is her radiant.
Nancy Huggett is a settler descendant who writes, lives, and caregives in Ottawa, Canada on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg people. Thanks to Firefly Creative, Merritt Writers, and not-the-rodeo poets, she has work in The Citron Review, The Forge, Literary Mama, Prairie Fire, and The New Quarterly.