Navigating Early Read Online Free PDF

exhilarating. Hers were old and earned. She had made a necklace of shells for him, so he could always hear the sea lapping on his home shore.
    “How will I find my way?” he asked as he prepared to leave.
    “Look to the stars,” she said, ruffling his hair. “They will guide you.”
    The boy and his mother gazed at the stars as they had when he was small. “Remember those?” He pointed to a cluster that looked like a crab. And another that resembled a hunter. “Which should be my guide?”
    His mother looked to the night sky. “What do you see?” she asked.
    “That one.” He pointed to a shining star. “That one—in the little bear. It’s always there.”
    His mother said, “We will name that star, and it will guide you. And for me, I will know that it is within both our sights.” She pointed to the little bear’s bright light. “That star will be my Polaris. But”—his mother pointed to a larger group of stars—“the little bear has a mother. The Great Bear.” Pi’s mother gazed out into the rolling sea. “And a mother’s love is fierce. The Great Bear will watch over you.”
    Finally, Pi cast off, waving as the distance grew between them. Then she called after him. He had forgotten the necklace of shells.
    “Too late,” he called from a ways offshore. “I’ll get them when I return.”
    She watched as her son became the first to take the questions burning in his chest and set off by the light of the stars. Her Polaris would be the first navigator. But Pi had not yet earned his name.

5
 
    E arly continued writing numbers on the chalkboard as he told his story of Pi, but the talk of stars had taken me back to the one place I didn’t want to be: The creek near our house, with the late-afternoon sun dancing on the water. After the survival outing.
    “Come on, Jackie,” Mom had said, trying to perk me up. “Let’s skip some rocks. See if you can get four skips with one.”
    “I might get lost,” I grumbled.
    “Oh, you’re just a bit out of sorts. You’ll find your way next time.”
    “Fat chance,” I said. “I can name every constellation in the sky, but put a few clouds in the way, and I get lost. A lot of good stargazing does.”
    Mom tilted her head back and looked up at the sky. “Sounds to me like you’re getting ahead of yourself, Jackie.That’s like expecting a young lady to do your laundry before you gaze into her pretty eyes.”
    I looked at her, confused.
    “You’re jumping into the navigating part too soon. Maybe you should focus on the beauty of those stars up there apart from their function. Just take them in, admire them, stand in awe of them, before you expect them to lead the way. Besides, who’s to say that one group of stars belongs together and only together? Those stars up there are drawn to each other in lots of different ways. They’re connected in unexpected ways, just like people. Who’d have thought your father and I would make a pair? Me, a farm girl from Kansas, and him, a navy man from the East Coast.” She smiled at the retelling, even though I’d heard the story from both of them over the years.
    My mom had met my dad in a chance encounter. He’d spent some time in California and was heading back east to finish his last two years at the Naval Academy when his train got held up for some repairs in my mom’s hometown. He got off the train to stretch his legs just as my mother was delivering a cake to the Granby house to celebrate their new baby.
    My dad had said, “What’s a fella got to do to get a cake like that?”
    “I guess you’d have to have a baby,” my mother answered, grinning to beat the band , my dad would say.
    My dad smiled a smile that went into tomorrow , my mother would say. And that was the end of that , they both would say. He walked her down to the Granby farm, offering to carrythe cake, missed his train, and they were married the next month.
    My dad put aside a military career, which didn’t sit too well with his