"I really lost sight of what's important," I said while chucking a twig into the small fire at our feet. "You know?"

My husband nodded his head but remained silent. He was used to me rambling.

He is a good listener.

"It all seemed so important; the job, the kids' schooling, the house. Just stuff...life. Man!" I continued. "But in reality, it was all just a mirage. Self-created drama. None of that mattered."

I stopped to stare up at the sky. I remembered this time my friend Jane and I had made magic on her bedroom ceiling one night. We were young at the time; maybe 8? 9?

It'd been late.

Jane's mom had let me sleep over. We'd gotten an old shoebox and poked holes in the top of the box. Then when it was dark in her bedroom, Jane and I took a flashlight and projected light through the holes onto her ceiling. It looked like a thousand stars.

Those stars were fake, though, just like the priorities I'd had before our shipwreck.

As I gazed at the real stars above us, yawning beautifully in a glass-black sky, I realized how backwards my thinking had been.