Revealed themselves one star at a time

 Planning is key - especially with someone on the autistic spectrum.

I'd carefully sold the outdoor screening of A Hard Day's Night at Beacon Hill Park to younger daughter a couple of days in advance.

On the day in question, we had a couple of hours to sunset, so I put on some music after dinner and made popcorn - having been mindful enough to locate the popping corn earlier in the day, which required cleaning out a couple of cupboards.  (The B-Festival wasn't selling popcorn this year.) I summoned younger daughter, so she could enjoy the kernels blossoming into white.

Then I withdrew to cover myself in highly toxic "Muskol", having also dug that out in advance. I diplomatically got younger daughter to don shoes and socks, rather than her favoured footwear of the summer, her fancy flip-flops.

Leaving our building, I took the lead, race-walking the most direct route to the Cameron Bandshell, reflecting on how it had been almost exactly three years since the evening we last attended a film at the Free-B Movie Festival.  In 2019, we took younger daughter to the condo, to break the news that we were moving from the apartment we'd occupied since our return to Victoria in 2017.  That way, she could see her new bedroom, and to soften the blow, proceed to the park to watch a Harry Potter movie.  (It went well.)

Three years later, we secured a bench corner, not too near the front, and munched the home-made popcorn, and, in the deepening dusk, watched the Beatles in a film we must have seen over fifty times, but there are still new things to discover.  This time, I saw George Harrison fall against a speaker as he played, and wondered how I'd missed that, all these years.

A star (or, more likely, a planet) rose slowly behind the screen, and I made a wish.  It's always the same one, and I can't tell you what it is, for fear it won't come true.

Afterwards, the Resident Fan Boy, who'd been grumbling all weekend, said he was happy he'd come.  A large orange moon, just past being full, had made its way to a spot above the buildings on the eastern horizon,  beyond the dark park. On Southgate, I caught a glimpse of a brilliant meteor whizzing silently eastward, and younger daughter told me, as we walked home, that she'd spotted a shooting star during the movie.  This was at the time of the Perseids.  

I felt tired, but content.  It would have been nice to have ended there.

Planning doesn't prevent the unexpected.  Once home, the Resident Fan Boy couldn't find his phone.  Sighing patiently, I phoned his number from mine.  We heard nothing.

The RFB sought and panicked, while I went into the bathroom to turn off the taps on the tub he'd been running.  The RFB dove back into the night, to retrace his steps in the dark.

About five minutes later, younger daughter found the missing phone under the bathmat.  I texted, hoping the message would flash up on his FitBit:  "You can come home."  "It was under the bathmat."

I texted over and over.  Thirty-seven times.

When the RFB returned half an hour later, he realized he'd silenced the ringer for the movie, which is why we couldn't hear it when searching the apartment.

I got to bed about 1 am, after rinsing the toxic insect repellent from my body.  Two days later, about a dozen bites blossomed on my knees.  They seemed to come out of nowhere, like stars in a summer sky.