As we talked, time suddenly stood still for me. I watched a fluorescent green glowing ball arc across the sky over the trees. There was a yellowish-green tail arching behind it. The center of the green ball was glowing yellow. Although I only saw it for a moment, I noticed intricate details of the bizarre sight. I was impressed by the fact that there was no defined border to this thing; it had an indistinct exterior.

It felt like an hour that I stood with my mouth open, staring. Only one other woman saw something bright out of the corner of her eye. I'd been knocked out of my own life for an eternity, staring at this strange apparition, then dropped back onto my porch.  Though my friends stood with me, I was the only one who lived this experience.  All they knew was that I suddenly interrupted the conversation to start raving insanely about a glowing green ball.

When I was in art school, I stood talking with a fellow student one chilly evening. I saw a similar sight - a glowing green ball sweeping through the sky. At the time, I wondered if it might have been a UFO.  Later I learned that it was a meteorite entering the atmosphere and landing. A piece of the galaxy, landing on our Earth. 

My second meteorite sighting! That must be significant.  I knew few people who have even seen one.

I called the local TV meteorologist. He said the Geminid Meteor Shower was due to start the next evening, that I must have seen one of the very first meteors. When I told him it was huge and glowing green with a tail, he was startled. Apparently meteorites of that size were not what he expected.

So, a piece of a comet hurtled through the dark space between planets for untold numbers of years, then tore through our atmosphere and crashed near my house. I stood on my porch on a cold night at 10:00 and saw it fly past in flames.

What might it mean, to see a piece of blazing interplanetary debris landing in my neighborhood?  Is it the universe waving at me?  What might it mean that I saw one in Maryland 20 years ago and one in Colorado now? Maybe it signifies big changes. Shortly after seeing that first meteorite, my marriage ended. That particular change freed my life immeasurably.  Possibly a whole new category of change is plummeting towards me. 

I wonder what had happened on that comet before it broke into pieces called meteors. Did any creatures live there? How do we know? Maybe there were creatures that our instruments can't detect. What was the surface like? If a piece of the meteorite sits in someone's back yard in my neighborhood, there might be pieces of that comet's history remaining. Fragments of a celestial mountain or riverbed, or a shoelace from an undetectable comet-alien, might be embedded in smoky rock in someone’s garden.

I wish I could find it. I'm grateful to have seen something so shocking and otherworldly, but I do wish I could find the meteorite. I'd like to hold it and dream of where it's been.

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From the Hubble Observatory's website www.hubblesite.org:

What is the difference between a meteor, a meteoroid and a meteorite?

Most of us probably have seen meteors or shooting stars. A meteor is the flash of light that we see in the night sky when a small chunk of interplanetary debris burns up as it passes through our atmosphere. "Meteor" refers to the flash of light caused by the debris, not the debris itself.

The debris is called a meteoroid. A meteoroid is a piece of interplanetary matter that is smaller than a kilometer and frequently only millimeters in size. Most meteoroids that enter the Earth's atmosphere are so small that they vaporize completely and never reach the planet's surface.

If any part of a meteoroid survives the fall through the atmosphere and lands on Earth, it is called a meteorite. Although the vast majority of meteorites are very small, their size can range from about a fraction of a gram (the size of a pebble) to 100 kilograms (220 lbs) or more (the size of a huge, life-destroying boulder).

From Wikipedia, regarding the Geminid Meteor Shower:

The Geminids are a meteor shower caused by an object named 3200 Phaethon, which is thought to be an extinct comet. The meteors from this shower can be seen in mid-December and usually peak around 12-14 of the month. The Geminid shower is thought to be intensifying every year and recent showers have seen 120-160 meteors per hour under optimal conditions. The Geminids were first observed only 150 years ago, much more recently than other showers such as the Perseids and Leonids.