A Great Conjunction - Jude Higgins

The mother went out with her spade on the night of the winter solstice, 2020, just after sunset when Jupiter and Saturn were the closest they’d been in the night sky for 400 years. You might think she had something to bury, but it was nothing like that. She wanted to dig a hole for a new tree. And then in the day time she would plant an oak in a place where in four hundred more years one of her descendants would stand under its branches and gaze towards the sky to see the two planets in conjunction again.

It was safe in her country garden at night. And she hoped she’d live another year to check the new growth of the tree and that next winter her estranged only son would return from New York and they’d gaze into the sky together, although the planets would not be aligned like this.

The son went out with his smartphone on the night of the winter solstice 2020 just after sunset and walked to the middle of Central Park. You might think was making his usual secret call or that he was waiting for someone to contact him but today, it was nothing like that. He looked up. Even with his naked eye in midst of the city, Saturn and Jupiter looked bright. He took a picture, which clearly showed Jupiter’s four brightest moons and the faint rings around Saturn. In the daytime, he might send the picture to his mother. And he’d save the photo to show the child he might never have, the child he would tell about Galileo, who, four hundred years previously, used a telescope to look at these planets and kept notes that people could still read now.

It wasn’t safe in the park on dark winter nights and he hoped he’d live another year. Perhaps he’d feel able to visit his mother, even though the planets would not be aligned like this.

For now the mother and son silently radiate their love across the ocean. Tonight they feel as close as Jupiter and Saturn, which in the sky, look as if there is only a pinky finger’s distance between them, although they are 600 million kilometres apart.

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Jude Higgins writes flash fiction and organises writing events. Her chapbook The Chemist’s House was published in 2017 by V.Press and you can find her work in many places online and in anthologies. She founded Bath Flash Fiction Award in 2015 and directs the short short fiction press, Ad Hoc Fiction and Flash Fiction Festivals, UK.