Moon Child

I believe in signs. I believe in Mother Earth and the Moon and God and Love and asking for what you need out loud. Someone is listening – I promise you – because last night, she answered me.

It had been a day, a not so perfect day where I couldn’t shake the sadness and apathy that had taken hold. When these days come – curling my body around itself to protect my center, wrapping knees into chest, arms around knees, squeezing eyelids tight to shut out the world – I’m never quite sure what to do, how to right myself again.

There was nothing I could point to and say, “Aha! That is the thing that has busted me up. That is the thing I must fix.” The thoughts just rolled in, covering me in gray fog as I fumbled through the hours until kids were tucked in beds and the responsibilities of the day were done. I had big things on my mind; it was time to shut them down and start over in the morning.

I grabbed my phone for a final scroll before clicking on the tv to numb the remaining minutes until bedtime. “April’s Super Moon Tonight,” I read. “Best time to view 10:35.” I jumped from the couch to check the clock. It was 9:40, but I couldn’t wait. I needed to see her now.

I pulled on my slippers, grabbed a jacket and walked, nearly ran, out the front door and into the rain-soaked evening. But the clouds that had covered my day also covered the sky, and only black surrounded me. I stood in the middle of our driveway, straining my eyes, searching for some small glimmer. Through the looming red pines, I found her hiding place. She gave herself away with a muffled glow blotted out by storm clouds sending lightning bolts down to ground off in the distance. The thunder rumbled from the East and I watched the flashes of light illuminate the darkness, but no moon. The night had all but swallowed her.

“I need to see you,” I said aloud to her and the dark and the God that I hoped could hear me. “I need you to come out. I need to see you.”

Nothing. No one answered. Had the days of isolation really left me babbling to the empty air? I felt a twinge of foolishness, then doubled down.

“Please, I have to see you. Just come out!” Startling myself, my voice grew in desperation. “Please!”

I thought back to other times she had come when I’d called – when I’d been a world away longing for something familiar, I’d wait on her to crawl up from behind the foreign harbor, send rippled fingers across the water, and remind me I was not alone. Years later, growing and expectant, she watched from early morning indigo sky as my husband and I raced to the hospital to deliver our middle child. My water had broken weeks too early, and I stared at her through the car window and a continuous stream of tears, begging her to share some light. She’d arrived in times of celebration on the night of my birthday as I sat on a lawn with long-time friends taking in a summer concert. “Good night, you moonlight ladies, and rock-a-bye sweet baby James.” She rose above the tree-line, just like I’d asked, as the song that has always belonged to my oldest son surged through the air. She rarely let me down, and with all that weighed on my mind – things I was actively wrestling with and things that sat quietly in the background gnawing – I could not walk away.

I was getting ready to shout, to yell into the dark that I would not go inside until she showed herself, when she began to rise. Quickly, she climbed out from beneath the blanket of gray, the spring storm that had covered her so completely. In one breath, she appeared and lit up the night while I stood on the concrete, knowing she would hear me, knowing she would come. When she burst into her fullest self, I cried, audibly sobbed, in awe and gratitude and solidarity with this force of nature, this celestial goddess that pulled at me as she pulls the tides, unraveling me, righting me, in ways I cannot do when left to my own devices.

After standing in all those feelings, allowing them to wash over me and onto the concrete driveway, I gathered myself and rushed back in the house to see which of my children might still be awake. Maybe my boys needed this same moment of wonder. My oldest and youngest both rustled in their sheets.

“Do you want to go see the Moon?”

They climbed out of bed and pulled on little rubber boots, wrapped themselves in shiny raincoats and followed me outside. We stood together in the driveway, looking up at the giant globe of light hanging beyond the trees. My youngest turned to me, disgruntled.

“I thought it was a crescent moon,” he said, then spun around and marched his tiny, tired body back inside. Maybe I was wrong.

My first born, though, he stayed, quietly watching her climb higher.

“Let’s walk a little and see if we can find a spot where the trees aren’t in our way.”

Hand in hand, we moved down the driveway and into a small opening, a place we could watch her without obstruction.

“Is it really that close to us?”

“It sure looks that way tonight, doesn’t it? It looks like you could just reach out and touch her.”

His right hand moved through the night, up and out of the cloak of his raincoat, stretching toward the moon while I laughed.

“It’s just so beautiful. Mama really needed this,” I whispered, and he retrieved his little hand from her grasp and wrapped it inside my jacket instead. We stood there until the chill started to penetrate, signaling the end of our adventure. Walking slowly, we retreated back toward the house but as we neared, his little boy voice broke through the quiet.

“Mom, I think I know what the moon means tonight.”

“Oh yeah, buddy? What do you think that beautiful moon means tonight?”

“I think it means that [our foster son] is going to get to stay with us forever.”

I froze, then bent down to throw my arms around his rubbery raincoat, squeezing him tightly to my chest.

“Oh, my baby boy. Do you know how much Mama loves you? You are just the sweetest thing,” pulling him away from me for a second to find his eyes. Without hesitation, without diving into any of the heartbreak or happiness or guilt or frustration that lingered between his words, I affirmed, “I think it might mean that, too.”

He smiled, nodded his head, and I wiped at my eyes yet again. This night and this moon had brought so much more than I even knew to ask for. It reminded me that I am not alone; someone is always listening. It reminded me that this world is as it always was; the Moon will continue to rise, parting the clouds night after night.

Most importantly, it reminded me that my oldest son, my first born, my Sweet Baby James, took part of my spirit with him when he broke from my body. This baby I’ve loved the very longest, who troubles me more than any other child and drives me to the point of utter madness, has big things on his mind, too. Sometimes, they are the same big things that cloud my own, but still, he watches and waits. He hopes. He is a sign-seeker like his mother, and his Love is as big as the glorious Moon and is every bit as faithful.

– Ashley, Woman of a Certain Grace