Sometime around the return of Halley’s Comet in 1986, my mother had photographs taken of my brother, sister, and me in front of a comet-themed backdrop. Back then, going to a photography studio was an event in itself. You’d flip through options as backdrops rolled down like movie screens behind you. We usually went to Olan Mills, where everything felt just a little more official than it probably was.

Without Olan Mills branding on the photos (and considering we weren’t dressed up in suits), it looks like these might be school photos. My youngest sister, who likely wasn’t in school yet, didn’t have a matching comet backdrop. That detail leans toward a school setting, even though my siblings and I were attending different schools at the time. I believe I was in Gunpowder Elementary, while my brother and sister were at Chapel Hill Elementary. Looking at the backdrops, my brother’s and sister’s comet scenes are nearly identical, which makes it even more curious.

Looking at the picture now, the clothes immediately give it away. The red-striped edges and seams on a dark blue short-sleeved T-shirt practically shout 1980s. What stands out most to me, though, is the white belt with two rows of holes. I wore that belt for years, long enough for it to become part of the memory itself. My brother wore a gray Spalding T-shirt with long blue sleeves, and my sister wore a white shirt with long red sleeves featuring Strawberry Shortcake on the front.

My youngest sister did have an Olan Mills photo of her own—just her in a summer dress good enough for Sunday service, with a plain black background. It was kept alongside the Halley’s Comet photos in my mother’s photo album, which makes me think it may have been done so she wouldn’t miss out while the rest of us had ours taken.

Interest In Astronomy

I remember the comet being a big deal, even if I don’t actually remember seeing it clearly in the night sky. Not like Comet Hale–Bopp, which hung there in 1997; unmistakable and impossible to ignore. Halley’s Comet, at least in my memory, was more about the idea of it. Something important was passing by, whether you could see it or not.

It’s often that way with events like eclipses, too. More often than not, there are gray skies, or you’re simply not in the right place on the planet to see them properly.

On one of our school field trips, I remember visiting a large circular room with a white dome overhead, dimly lit, with a fenced-off structure in the center. It felt like a theater, but different. From that central platform, a mechanical frame, almost like scaffolding with large spheres on either end, rose up and began projecting stars across the dome.

A tour guide used a powerful flashlight to point out constellations as they appeared above us, tracing shapes in the sky that, other than the Big Dipper, I still couldn’t quite follow. It was part lesson, part illusion, like the night sky had been brought indoors and put on display.

Another segment played more like a movie. It explored how humans would need to adapt to live on Mars. As the narrator worked through each challenge, gravity, atmosphere, and environment, a cartoon figure gradually changed. By the end, he no longer looked human at all, but something closer to an alien. It was fascinating, but also a little unsettling in a way that stuck with me.

I remember my uncle had this giant telescope set up in the backyard, far bigger than the kind most people start with. I think it even had a motor to keep things centered. One of the times I was allowed to look through it, I saw the Moon, clearer than I’d ever imagined. He talked about the stars, pointing things out, but I didn’t really understand what he meant or how to tell one from another. I don’t remember anything about the comet from that visit, but it feels like it belonged to that same stretch of time, close enough to be connected. He also had HO-scale trains in his basement.

Mark Twain

There was also the story of Mark Twain, who was born during one appearance of the comet and died during the next. That stuck with me. It gave the comet a kind of rhythm, something that returned every 75 years, tying generations together whether they realized it or not.

At the time, I figured I probably wouldn’t see it again. I would have to be well into my 80s. With the constant fear of the USSR during the Cold War on the news, it felt like Armageddon would surely have come and gone by 2000. Its next visit is expected on July 28, 2061. By then, I’ll have turned 86 in May. That realization used to feel distant, almost theoretical. Somehow, I’ve already survived the end of the world, and now it feels more like a quiet appointment set far in advance.

There was even a movie tied to that feeling of curiosity and unease, The Adventures of Mark Twain. It had that stop-motion clay look, playful on the surface but with moments that were unexpectedly eerie in a way that stuck with you. I remember the strange scenes, the tone, and even a piano that felt oddly important at the time. There were even biblical scenes, Adam and Eve, the serpent, and the tree of knowledge, which added to that strange mix of wonder and unease.

Funny how something that felt so big can fade into fragments: a backdrop, a belt, and the idea that I might only get one more chance to see it.

Strawberry Shortcake

My sisters had a whole collection of Strawberry Shortcake dolls and accessories. Each one had its own scent: blueberry, strawberry, lemon, and others I can’t quite place anymore. I remember a blueberry doll in particular, along with a boy character named Huckleberry Pie, loosely inspired by Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, and even a cranky, mean old purple man from the cartoons who stood out for being so different from the rest. (Most of my adult life, I liked purple, so go figure.) There were scratch-and-sniff stickers, too, each one matching the different fruits.

I wanted He-Man action figures, especially Moss Man, for his mossy texture, which the son of our family friends, the Wodarczyk’s, had, but we weren’t allowed to have them because of the fighting and magic in the cartoons. My brother and I did have Smurfs, though there wasn’t much you could actually do with them. They mostly just sat on a shelf, while my sisters had full setups: plastic houses, accessories, and entire little worlds to play in.

The Smurfs were their own kind of challenge. There were so many of them, and it felt like you were supposed to collect all 100, even though you never really could.

Looking back, I think my mom was the real driver behind a lot of the collecting. Strawberry Shortcake, especially, seemed to speak to her inner child more than anything my brother and I were drawn to.

Most of my time ended up elsewhere: building with Lego, reading whatever I could get my hands on, and spending hours programming games on the Atari 400.