It’s that amazing time of year when the Perseids make their luminous entrance into our atmosphere. Last night, my daughter and I lay side-by-side on a blanket in the grass, surrounded by friends, and stared at the sky, trying not to blink, willing stars to shoot, fall, and dazzle. We were in the same spot where she saw her first shooting star, figuring it must be good luck.

Her first was actually one of the Geminids. Earlier that summer, on a beach vacation in Ocean Isle, I had seen at least two shooting stars, and one glamorous falling star over the ocean. She missed them all. When the Geminids came around that December, we were determined to see her first fiery streak of space debris together. So we sat in our car, wrapped in blankets, staring off towards its namesake constellation. After an hour, we were about to give up, when a brilliant light streaked across the horizon. When we both inhaled sharply together, I knew she’d seen it. Magic.

My high school sweetheart and I used to stargaze all the time. We actually sought out fields and rock ledges and water edges on which to sit and marvel at the sky, and sometimes at the twinkling in each other’s eyes.

At summer camp when I was about 10 years old, closing ceremony took place in the evening. I’m not sure if the timing was planned because they knew there would be a meteor shower, or if the light show was a happy coincidence. Either way, the giant bonfire paled in comparison to the celestial fireworks I witnessed that night.

A couple of years earlier, I went on an elementary school field trip to the planetarium for a star show. Hearing the narrator tell short stories about the constellations while highlighting them across the giant domed ceiling whetted my appetite for making astronomy a hobby.

At an even younger age, I remember being in the old Suburban with my family, when my dad pulled the car over alongside a field and told us to get out. It was that night that I learned about the Big Dipper and the North Star. The sky was big that night, and all of the stars were awake. I fell in love with stars in that awe-inspiring moment. Perhaps by fate, my first constellation was also my high school mascot: The Bear, and our yearbook is titled, “Ursa.”

Last night, a few Perseids made an appearance at our Star Party. I love that my daughter and I will always have shared experiences like this to cherish. I hope that I am paying it forward by stirring up in her a curiosity about the stars. I hope that she also feels moved while being still, grounded while staring into the expanse of the heavens, and filled with faith that something amazing is about to happen.