If the weather cooperates (which it hasn’t exactly been all winter) we may see the super-blue-black moon tomorrow morning. The eclipse begins at 2:45 am or so and ends at 7. The peak is around 4:30. Too bad it wasn’t last week, during the tsunami warning kerfuffle when we were all up anyway. Then again, it was snowing so hard we would have missed it. Or would we?
This morning, Pearl ran out the door barking at the moon. That’s not just an expression for making a fuss over nothing. Dogs really do it. And, we all know that babies arrive on the full moon, or close to it, or at least sometimes. And then there’s the word lunatic. The pull of the moon can make you crazy. Not to mention all the astrologists who are treating this like the superbowl of moon events. I do know the tide ebbs and flows in all of us, since we are mostly water, and that the moon pulls on them.
Which may explain my anxiety over the ferry cancellations (again today…) Even if I don’t leave much it’s nice to know I can. Or why I just turned off the radio, since the quotes from the president in all the stories analyzing his first year in office stink like the lowest fall tides and literally are going to drive me nuts if I listen another second.
But I want to write of softer things that really matter.
Of how on Saturday morning, I clicked on a video from a young friend after the birth of her twins eight years ago. It was set to music, well edited, brief, and black and white. I held those tiny twin boys in library board meetings with their mother. We passed them around, speaking softly and making gentle eye contact and whispering “hi there” and “look at you lucky boy”.
I met her sweet mother who traveled from Texas to help her with them. In the video, a kind of blue and wise song plays, or maybe that’s just how I heard it, watching those old man faced babies and their dad, and their tired and proud mom, and the grandmother, so young! So very pretty, and wide eyed with the wonder and responsibility and logistics and all the promises a grandma makes to do a better job than she did with her own children, because she knows better now.
The grandmother died so suddenly. She was young and fit. She collapsed and never woke up. The twins and their parents moved back to be closer to their grandpa and aunts and uncles and cousins. Which is so good, right? Still, I sobbed and sobbed. It just slayed me. I took a walk and my heart hurt. I was so sad I was worried it might stop. A whole year of losses big and small piled up like driftwood on my chest. But I walked, and listened to the sea and wind, and felt the tug of, can I say it? Something super and eternal, that is also blue sometimes, like a baby’s eyes, and even black, like those little boys’ hair, and I held that lonely place for a while, a whole day. My husband thought I was upset with him. I assured him I wasn’t.
Then, on Sunday after yoga a woman broke her leg falling on the inside stairs, I heard the crack, it was terrible, she was a friend of a friend visiting from North Carolina, and we delayed church which is in the same building, while the ambulance crew came, although a nurse and two EMTs that had been in yoga class, were there.
Church was a relief, the prayers rolled along the way Episcopal services do, asking nothing of me while giving their guidance and a kind of peace, and the hymns helped, especially the one about falling on my knees with my face to the rising sun, O Lord have mercy on me. The twin’s grandmother had studied theology. We talked about that at the playground on one of her many visits.
I drove Chip, with the dog he’s taking to be spayed in Juneau, to the airport and the plane was on time, and when I returned I had a little melt down, but rallied and cleaned the house for an Epiphany party– divine light among us– Soon, there were five small children running up and down the stairs, and grandmothers and a great grandmother looked after them, at one point I heard a crash and looked for my daughter and son-in-law for help, and realized neither of them were there. My daughter went to basketball practice and my son-in-law went home to workout, and it made me suddenly over the moon with the gift of that trust, of their faith in me. (It was nothing. Though I suspect someone was jumping on the bed.)
I hope I can see the eclipse tomorrow. I am glad to only feel this way once in a very blue moon– and that there is no full moon at all in February, when we will instead gain daylight like crazy.
