two moons

"as the two moons raced across the sky...creating double shadows..."
the image lingers in my mind.

the setting? mars

the book? martian chronicles by ray bradbury

yes...it is science-fiction.

no...i never would have read it on my own, but it was in the bathroom, and i have trouble resisting pages of print.

now we are reading it together.

"scott- does mars really have two moons?" i ask, knowing that despite the fact that i am teaching astronomy and he isn't, my science minded husband will know the answer.

"yes," he replies and then adds, "phobos and....deimos, which mean fear and dread."

this is marriage...the marriage of two minds, two people. completely different histories and interests, but the two met and enjoyed the gifts the other brought to the table.

pride and prejudice meets martian chronicles. instead of two lovers set in the victorian england, i (the reader) find myself amidst various astronauts venturing into the planet mars where the martians are highly unimipressed and uniterested in the proud men from a much less sophisticated planet called earth.

the similarities are greater than i ever suspected.

so now the histories become entangled, the interests merge. a love of reading takes a new wife into her virgin voyage of sci-fi where she finds not only a story, but sees her husband in greater dimensions.

i'll keep reading.