Grandpa sat down.
“Because your mother wouldn’t have allowed it.”
That’s when Mom finally told me what they had been hiding for months.
Grandpa was going to the hospital the next morning.
I needed a serious heart operation.
That was also the reason Mom was constantly telling me not to sit on her lap. A few months earlier, Grandpa had also been operated on a leg and doctors had warned him not to undergo unnecessary efforts.
I looked at Mom.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t want you to be afraid.”
Grandpa took my hand.
“And I didn’t want to go to the hospital before I kept our promise.”
“What promise?”
image
He pointed to the telescope.
When I was five, I had once told Grandpa:
“Someday I want to stay up all night with you and see shooting stars.”
I had completely forgotten.
He’s not.
That night a rare meteor shower was going to occur, and Grandpa had spent months repairing Grandma’s old telescope to fulfill that wish of my childhood before her operation.
Around two in the morning, all three of us were on the porch.
I was on my mattress.
Grandpa, in his.
Mom was sitting between us.
Suddenly, the first trail of light crossed the sky.
“I saw her!” I shouted.
Grandpa laughed.
Then a second appeared.
And a third.
At one point, Mom put her head on Grandpa’s shoulder.
And suddenly I understood something I hadn’t even thought about before that night.
My mother was not afraid of grandpa.
I was afraid of losing it.
The next morning, they took Grandpa to the hospital.
The operation lasted more than five hours.
I spent all that time sitting in the waiting room, holding in my hand the small lid of his old telescope.
When the doctor finally got out, Mom got up immediately.
The doctor smiled.
“Everything went well.”
It’s been eighteen years since that day.
Grandpa is very old now.
But every year, on the same date, I keep going home.
We placed two mattresses on the porch, put the telescope next to the window and wait for the first shooting star to appear.
And every time, without exception, Grandpa smiles and asks me:
“So tonight you’re going to stay by my side too?”
And from the other room, Mom always shouts,
