To surrender myself to the task of observing the moon each evening was daunting in itself. The task not only summoned my observation skills, but it challenged my scheduling abilities, my commitment, and most of the evenings, my patience.
For the past few days, amongst an acre of Douglas firs, alders, cedars and mountain spruce, I made my way out into the darkness each night in search for the moon. It was the deep darkness, the intense silence and the slushy snowflakes that awakened my senses – the moon was not there.
In conversation with my son, he reminded me of when he was a young boy, he would look up into the night sky and see only the moon. He felt that the stars were dimmed by the urban lights of the boulevards; and the cars and street lights were the campfire that warmed his nights.
He explained that as bedtime approached each night the moon would appear in his window – he always felt comforted by the moon’s presence. The moon seemed to be everywhere when he was a young boy; the moon was a signal to him to go home in summer and a blanket for him to hide under from the unknown in the winter.
My son continued to share with me, in his customary poetic way, how he now lies awake at night with his daughter’s legs wrapped around his arm, her breathing constant - a sound that soothes him; his wife and son, lie next to him drifting into a deep sleep. He said that his mind then floats back to those days when he could always see the moon through his window; when the 238,855 miles to the moon’s surface was a short ride away and then became a blanket for his soul.
He then noted that he no longer relies on the moon. He goes to bed well after dark. The window of his bed is hidden by the tree of the plum and now he lives in the sun and just remembers the time that he was raised under the moon.
He was Moonstruck
