Star Counters

Once upon a time, there was a little boy whom everyone called Barnabás. Barnabás lived in a small house with his mother and grandfather, whom he loved dearly. The old man, whose hair was silver and whose eyes sparkled with a dreamy glow, was excellent with tools and spoke the language of machines masterfully. He could fix anything, but his favorite pastime was building and flying model airplanes. Whenever they could, they spent their days playing with the models that elegantly soared through the blue skies and, in the evenings, gazed at the stars. They dreamed of space travel, imagining that one day an actual UFO might land in their garden. They speculated on how they would greet it on behalf of planet Earth, what they would say, and what the alien being might share about distant stars and the strange planets it had visited.

The garden itself was a little paradise, full of fruit trees, grapevines, flowers, and birdsong. But it had a special spot: a small bench under the apple tree. This was where Barnabás’s grandfather retreated when lost in thought, and it was here that the most beautiful dreams were born, dreams that Barnabás imagined just as vividly as the old man.

But time, like the wind, moves on and changes everything. One autumn day, Barnabás noticed that his grandfather was working less on the model airplanes. His hands trembled, his face seemed more tired, but his eyes retained their same sparkle. The old man didn’t complain, but Barnabás knew that something had changed.

“You know, my boy,” his grandfather said one day while slowly repairing one of the airplane wings, “my body is becoming like the red rose in the garden during autumn. The time will come when the flowers fall, the leaves wither, and only the dry, lifeless branches remain. But remember, the roots stay in the ground, waiting for spring to return.”

Barnabás didn’t fully understand what his grandfather meant, but he felt a pang of unease. He lovingly took the old, wrinkled hand and asked, “We’ll wait for spring together, right?”

But spring never came for the old man. One cold December morning, his grandfather fell asleep and never woke up. Barnabás’s heart ached as he saw his grandfather’s lifeless body resting on the bed for the last time. Time and again, he went to the garden to sit on the bench under the apple tree, gazing at the sky. His grandfather’s room, where the model airplanes stood, became like a royal throne room: a grand armchair dominated the space, and the room was filled with memories and stories of times past. Barnabás missed his grandfather’s voice, laughter, and dreams. One day, while sitting on his grandfather’s favorite bench, a strange feeling came over him. It was as if the garden began to whisper to him:

“Dear Barnabás, the secret always lies where you least expect it.”

Barnabás lifted his head. The stars twinkled at him with a knowing smile, the breeze gently caressed his face, and the trees swayed softly as if the entire universe, like a peculiar alien being, wanted to convey a secret message to him in its mysterious, incomprehensible language.

Driven by a sudden impulse, he began digging near the roots of the red rose. Just ten centimeters below the surface, he found a small carved box containing a note:

“Our dreams never disappear; they just transform.
With love, Grandpa.”

From that day forward, Barnabás knew that the light of the stars was not just a cold, distant sparkle but a sign that something immense and understanding was out there, watching over him with loving eyes from afar.

Many years later, Barnabás became a real astronaut. His spacecraft roared as it ascended above the clouds. When the engines shut off, a sudden, profound silence filled the instrument-packed cabin, which now floated weightlessly hundreds of kilometers away from the life-giving Earth, in the desolate, cold, unwelcoming void of space.

But he wasn’t afraid at all because he felt that someone was invisibly sitting beside him, counting the stars together.

In memory of Grandpa Gyula Rohrsetzer: † (2023.12.01)