"And the walls can't stop us now?" Or the buildings{From seeing the GREATEST SHOW}

What walls stop you from experiencing the greatest show on earth, in the sky?

The Wall of busyness?

So many times, when the children were little, I recall them calling me to watch this or that beauty in the sky. The sun is setting, they would call. It sets beautifully everyday, sweetheart. Mommy has to change another diaper and put another load on and see another dinner on the table, etc. It never ended. It never let up and I could never quite understand their constant pestering of me on that subject.

As a New Yorker, I grew up on the rat-race itself. Running to be the best and learn the most and read the fastest and get into here and there. Beating this person and winning that accomplishment, being the most important pursuit.

One man grabbed my shirt collar with his music and made me imagine the sky. John Denver was a strange naturalist whose lyrics carried me to a place in the world that I might never have seen, even in my imagination. Rocky Mountain High? What does that mean?

I poured over his lyrics, some in my earphones and some not. My mother was concerned about this strange engagement with naturalism, but she didn't ridicule my peculiarity. I was keeping my grades up, for the most part and staying in the rat race for impressions' sake. But, I started to dream of seeing the sky.

Each day I rose with the sun and trapsed into the mines of subway existence and my experience with the sky was for a brief moment when the F train crossed the Brooklyn Bridge or whatever Bridge it crossed. The sun was always right there to meet me, rarely it was fog or clouds, but at 8 o'clock am it was the sun coming over the buildings and a clock which let me know if I would be okay or have detention that day. The sky was behind the clock, in my mind and I enjoyed it, only if the clock said 7:50 something. Otherwise, I was trying to figure how I was going to run with my huge book bag to get to where I had to go. SCHOOL. Missed the sky there THAT WAS THE GREATEST SHOW!

Mine was the best education ever. The best teachers taught engaging subjects with tremendous enthusiasm. No masculine distractions, except for the runners outside and we had to stop class when the track team would run in front of our school. There was no corralling our minds with all that. The teachers accommodated our hormones for the moment and then we went back to learning how to think and communicate and compete at the highest level our minds would allow. They stayed in constant communication with our parents via progress reports and they stayed in touch with our commitment to think and be taught. Slacking was not an option. The sky stayed outside my realm of interest in those days.