The way I remember it, my friend and I were in the back seat of the car. I was 10 years old. We were in for a long drive, and had quite the rapport going, knowing we had many a mile to share our thoughts in privacy. We felt secure and confident in our little bubble rolling through the world, self contained as the back seat with your best friend is, before being old enough to really understand the intricacies of traffic maneuvering.

Maybe it was this sense of security with our interior existence that brought us to ponder it's polarity in the subject of outer space, and the idea of Unidentified Flying Objects. Maybe she asked me... Either way, I knew my answer: Yes.

“I believe in aliens.”

“Why?” she asked.

Being excited by the prospect of confiding something special and thereby fortifying our B.F.F. status, I didn't hesitate in my response,

“Because I've seen one. Well, I've seen a UFO. I think... I mean, it was definitely unidentified...”, and thus my story began:

I was young. Like Terrible Twos Toddler young. We lived way out of Town, somewhere deep in the middle of the Land That Time Forgot, on a huge ranch, in an outdated single-wide mobile home. I lay on my twin bed pressed up against the fake wood paneling, underneath the only window in my room. Single paned, the kind you can feel the weather through. You read that right: two-ish year old me had my very own room. I mean, I shared it with my brother, but that was really just a technicality, as he was diaper swaddled and camped out between my parents on their floor mattress at the complete other end of the trailer. Quite a distance away in that all encompassing nighttime darkness, though certainly not insurmountable, as I would prove over and again almost nightly when my baby brain insomnia got the best of me. I just knew the army of porcupines who marched through my mind to the beat of my pulse were coming, and if they got close enough I would sprint to the other side of the house and crawl into the parents bed as well. To keep my baby brother.

But not this night! I was determined, in that way toddlers are, with their world view expanding exponentially on a daily basis. I was determined to stay in my own bed, no matter how overwhelming the terror, no matter how cold sweat inducing the gut wrenching insomnia night monster paranoia.

Why, you ask? Why would a perfectly sane and self-preserving two year old risk such certain peril?

For a sticker. I would do anything for stickers, for even just. One. Sticker. And my crafty parental units, oh they knew just how to work the system. There, next to my bedroom door, facing into the room where I slept, at my eyel ine just below the personalized light switch plate depicting my best friend the green Dinosaur Jessica. That's where they had placed it. The sticker chart. A square for each night of the week, a square awaiting the sweet caress of it's twin sticker, if only I was brave enough to sleep the entire night alone in my own big girl bed, in this big girl room. And everytime I would twist my little neck to the door, plotting the most direct route through the living room, to avoid porcupine sabatage, I would see the chart. They knew me so well...

And so I waited, alone in my bed, covers pulled up to my chin. Still, and silent, certain that any unnecessary movement would attract the goulish, incessant, and annoyingly well timed Porcupine Parade of my nightmares...

I stared up above, out the window into the night sky. Being so far out in the Land That Time Forgot, there was a total lack of light pollution, because there just weren't any lights. The Stars were the lights. So numerous the Stars and so clear was the night I could see the difference in their size and color. Yes, stars come in different colors. And on a sky like the one I grew up underneath, they were spread so thick like chunky marmalade there were parts of the sky that seemed to be more stars than space, and they blurred into each other in that Milky sort of Way. One Star caught my attention.

I liked the way it glowed, really bright like gold, if gold were made of light. And when I started staring at this star, I felt it staring back at me. It glowed brighter, and grew larger, but retained it's Star qualities. Almost like I was zooming in on it, except the opposite. The Star was zooming in on me. This whole time it had remained in the same place it hung in the night sky, just glowing more and increasing in size.

Now suddenly it seemed to be approaching, without actually moving across the sky. Just getting closer, until the Star was right outside the top of my bedroom window. Then the Star passed through my bedroom window, shut tight against the cold night... and hung there, against the ceiling of my room above my head, and as I tracked it's movement, it lowered straight down to my face and hovered in front of my eyes, and all my night time unknown porcupine army fears washed away.

There was no sound, but I could tell the Star was talking to me, and it told me there is nothing to fear. That I'm not alone.That I am loved, and that no matter what happens everything will be ok.

It was quite a convincing little Star. I believed it whole-heartedly, in that earnest way that toddlers can believe disembodied heavenly orbs passing through glass and flying around their bedrooms.

When the Star knew that I knew that everything everywhere would always be alright, it reversed its exact path, floating straight up from my face to the ceiling directly above my head, then adjusting course to bee-line out my (still completely closed) window to the point from where it had “zoomed in”, and then zoomed out again, until it hung again among the night sky, giving me a glittery gold wink twinkle. And I fell to sleep.

“Why do you think that was a UFO? Aren't UFOs big like spaceships? I don't think a spaceship could get into your room without breaking the window,”, my friend re-introduced her infallible 10 year old logic brain to the conversation.

“Well, I think maybe it was an alien, but maybe not a UFO, because it felt like being with someone I know and trust,”, realizing I had shared something deep and undefinable, I added “but it was probably just a dream I had when I was a baby.”.

I'm not sure if we had reached our destination, if we'd come to a cross walk, or if this warranted it's own roadside pull-off, but at this point my mom turned around from the front seat to look at me in the eyes and said “You told me that exact story one morning in the trailer when you were learning to sleep in your own room and I asked you how your night went. You told me then the same way you told it just now.”.

((Gorgeous Galactic imagery sourced from Pixabay))