The Planetarium

My 2001 Subaru struggles to keep up with traffic, so we kickoff another round of “my car.”

There’s an old convertible with white walls ahead. “My car that blue Mustang!” I shout.

My five-year-old son in the back repeats after me.

There were rules to this game at one point (for example, you can’t “my car” twice in a row and you can’t “my car” a car that has already been called), but we ignore the rules and keep looking for cool stuff that we can take possession of. He calls Dodge Challengers and anything orange, but we both ignore the enormous Chevy Suburbans and lumbering Ford Expeditions barreling past us.

I see another old Subaru, this one the same model as mine, maybe the same year, too. It looks identical. I speed up just enough to catch it. “Hey, buddy,” I call into the back seat, “Look at that.”

He cranes his neck to look where I’m pointing.

“My car, my car.” I say.

He loves this joke. “My car, that car too,” he says.

It’s my 40th birthday, predictably spent sitting in what Stevie Nicks called, “the stillness of remembering what you had.” I remember when I had just a simple cake and a quiet evening. I was never one for big parties, but also didn’t mind the attention. My life is so kid-centric now that I call my friends “other adults.” I used to have cake and spend time with other adults. That’s been replaced now with these annual museum trips.

We get tickets for the planetarium show and spend 30 minutes wandering through exhibits on water conservation. In a room made to look like a bathroom, I pick him up and hold him under a shower head. When I turn the faucet, a voice tells us about how much water we save by showering instead of taking a bath.

He doesn’t enjoy having felt powerless. Or maybe having felt scared. Somewhere in between the toilet that is not a toilet and the dishwasher that is not a dishwasher, I apologize.

He is excited and not excited about the planetarium show, in much the same way that he was excited and not excited about getting an x-ray when he sprained his elbow. We settle in and the lights go out. My left arm is extended across his chest like a seat belt while the night sky begins to spin above us. Taurus comes into view. “Here are his two, tall horns. And here, near his tail, are the Pleiades.”

We fly together through the darkness of space to see the cluster up close. My son pulls himself up to my ear and whispers “It’s a Subaru.” He doesn’t wait for me to respond, but settles back down in his chair. I keep my left hand across his chest. Still a seat belt.

For 20 years, I thought Subaru was an Australian car manufacturer. It started when I made an assumption about the Outback and The Outback. My complete knowledge of the vast Australian interior being informed entirely by The Rescuers Down Under, I was able to convince myself that the 4WD drivetrain was specifically designed for western Queensland or the Northern Territory. I also thought the careful arrangement of stars in the oval logo was the same as the 7-pointed stars in the Southern Cross constellation on the Aussie flag.

It’s this last assumption, now broken, that seems to fall into the eternal empty space above us. I let it go.

“If the Pleiades reminds you of something, maybe something you’ve seen in the parking lot, raise your hand.” The planetarium show’s presenter pauses for a moment and then adds, “Well, I can’t see any of you,” (it’s a bad joke, but it lands well) ”but if you think it looks like the Subaru logo, you’re right.”

I feel a knowing squeeze on my left hand.

We see other constellations and nebulae and star clusters before finally sitting for a moment outside of the galaxy, letting it spin slowly in the darkness above us. We’ve been asked not to use our phones, so I resist the urge to Google whether or not Subaru is Australian.

When the bass from the orchestral music crescendos into an earthquake, my son gives up on the planetarium in its entirety. He presses my palms to his ears, turns sideways, and lies down on my lap. In the dark, I can’t see him at all.

I can’t follow whatever it is I am supposed to be learning about the universe. I don’t need my phone, but I don’t need it. It can’t be Australian.

We drive home with Fleetwood Mac on the radio. There are no cars that we want on the road, or we’ve forgotten to play. The Pleiades is embossed on the Subaru’s steering wheel. I sit in the stillness of remembering what I had — thinking I was right.