As a child, I imagined that the stars were zillions of fireflies that had flown really, really high and found heaven.

“What’s up there,” I asked my mother one evening. Looking up from her newspaper, she stared at the ceiling confused. “Heaven,” I said. “What’s up in heaven?”

She smiled. “A place of eternal happiness and life in the Father’s kingdom,” she replied, then continued reading.

At eight, I was used to these kinds of answers. And whether they made sense or not, I was still expected to believe them. My mother called it “faith.” My father said was religion. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized there was a difference.

Growing up, Sunday morning church was a mandatory family event. “Today is the day of rest,” our priest started mass with. “On this day, we give thanks to the Eternal Father so that we will be rewarded in his kingdom.”

My mother was considered a religious person; she believed in things like the Lord and heaven. Most of the time she was quietly telling my father the proper things to say and do to find that kingdom. But even with her instructions, he usually signed the cross backwards or forgot a line during the Lord’s Prayer.

And Sundays were never restful for him – these were his days to work outside tending the many gardens that covered our property, or to go into the surrounding forest to chop trees for our wood-burning fireplace the coming winter.

There were no pre-chainsawing prayers muttered in the hopes of finding an easy-falling tree or for fat fruit to bring us joy through my mother’s homemade pies.

“Heat is expensive,” he’d say with a wink before heading into the woods. “And so is happiness. That’s why we have to create our own.”

On Sunday summer evenings, after working outdoors with him, I would run through our fruit orchard capturing fireflies in one of my mother’s empty jam jars. When the sides of the jar pinged from the dizzy dancing inside, I’d jump really, really high in the hopes of giving them a boost.

“Let me know what it’s like up there,” I whispered into the pen-poked air holes before launch.

After releasing our glowing prisoners, my father would lift me onto his shoulders so that I could get a closer look of “up there.” I watched as the fluorescent bugs webbed into constellations.

“Are the stars in heaven,” I asked.

He thought for a moment, possibly thinking of the right answer to give – the kind that my mother and the Lord would approve of.

“I was once told that every person has a star,” he finally said while looking up. “When that person dies, their star falls to the earth so that their soul can take its place in heaven.”

I understood this answer and searched the sky for falling stars.

“Where’s your star?”

“Right there.” My eyes followed his finger towards the cluster he pointed at. “That’s the constellation for this time of year,” he explained. “The season of fireflies.”

By autumn, everyday of the week had become my father’s day of rest – unraked leaves began to cover the weeds that had overtaken our gardens in the months following July.

“It’s going to start snowing soon,” he mentioned. It was the first Sunday we didn’t go to church and my mother and I bought firewood.

That evening I watched my parents recite their own mass in our living room, my father through a mask that covered his nose and mouth.

“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name…” my parents recited and signed the cross; it was the first time he did everything right.

As they prayed, I ran into the frosted orchard and searched for hibernating fireflies to replace any stars that were getting ready to fall. But when I looked up and saw the sky had changed, I realized some already had.