When We Looked Up

I lived in a small town where everything was stale and everyone knew about each other — but not too small that everyone would remember each other. Lots of movement and faded noise from daily activities. The only sense of joy that made you smile came from movies about big, bright cities and stories told by people who traveled anywhere beyond the next two big towns.

Life was simple and organized. You woke up — someone was always in charge of that. My bed was hard, and I don’t remember finishing my dreams. You wore whatever was laid out on the chair beside you. Breakfast consisted of what was prepared the night before in the kitchen: usually a thick slice of bread, at times cheese, strong black tea that you never finished but that burned your tongue, and a slice of some kind of meat product. The kitchen always felt cold, especially in the mornings.

Then you continued with your day. Some went to school, following the same stretch of paved road that was always gray in color and never even beneath your steps. Others went different directions toward their parked vehicles, which I’d heard required constant maintenance and routine operation. From what I remember, it always smelled in those garages — the fumes were strong. I’d been to at least five garages; they all had different-colored doors and smelled different inside. Did they have different chemicals there? But the cars looked the same — strange.

Other people took buses to work, but we never saw them. They woke up early and walked to the bus stations alone, probably in the dark since we didn’t have many streetlights. We only saw those people getting off the buses later in the day. They all looked steamed and shaken — lots of unhappy faces.

All the boys would drop everything and look up, racing to be the first to find the plane in the sky. The noise would freeze all our activities and generate a silent wave of happiness — you could hear hope. The sound was long and rare; you’d stare at the sky, not blinking, wishing to catch a glimpse of the plane, to see the runoff tail behind it — if you could. Then we’d stand and share our stories of the people on that plane, describing their busy lives filled with interesting things. From all those colorful and big images we saw in movies — those loud cities where people constantly walked and ate — it seemed life for them moved faster. People were occupied and never bored.

They probably didn’t care about us; deep down we knew that. They probably didn’t even look at the bottom — at us. There wasn’t much to see: a small town with lots of gray buildings standing in some pattern and formation, lots of thin roads, all surrounded by fields.

I had a baseball hat once. My dad gave it to me — apparently, he got it from a man who’d been in a different country. It was yellow in color and had some kind of writing on it, which I didn’t understand at the time, but it was the only one like it in the whole city. It was very cool. Every time I put it on, I imagined those people watching a game and drinking those big drinks in their hands, cheering, all happy and excited. I wore it constantly. It was the piece that connected me closer to that busy life — to those people who enjoyed themselves and had bright colors everywhere.

Later, my friend’s dog ripped that hat into a thousand small pieces. It got shredded, destroyed beyond repair. My parents told me that both of my grandmothers could sew anything — they couldn’t fix that one. I hate wearing hats now, and I don’t even watch baseball. I never did. Our channels never covered it in the first place. But it was cool.

We’d stay and watch the plane pass by until the last trace of it disappeared in the big sky. Then life continued in our own patterns, as if nothing happened. Some went home for the night; others had things to do in the dark. Despite how many times we looked at those planes, we never had a similar story to tell each other. I guess your imagination runs wild when you’re free and far from the busy life and bright colors.