In phases, we discover what the moon is. We are born into  its glow and we are followed by it wherever we go.  Checking the faces, nonplused by its going each day and coming each night, we understand that this is just the way of things. 

 

Eventually we come to accept that there is this force called gravity and that's why we stick down and that’s why the moon stays close. Then why not others?

 

It’s not glowing they say. It is merely reflecting back a reminder of the daylight we'd have to live without for a while.

 

And then we learn it's more than that. We learn that the very rise and fall of the tides has something or other to do with this strange companion. 

 

People can race to get there, but  we all know it belongs to each of us. As if we each have our own moon. And a very personal relationship with it.

 

When I went off to  Hong Kong to study abroad, my Mother reminded me of a certain mouse that knew he wasn't alone because across the world, loved ones were looking at the very same night sky. 

 

Years later, we find great joy in how bad our phone pictures of the moon turn out. But we still send them, still feeling connected by that small mouse and that enormous, uncapturable  round.  

 

Once, I woke up on a beach on Kelley’s Island in Lake Erie and the moon looked four or even six times larger than the houses just across the bay.  It was bright orange and honestly scared the shit out of the four of us there.  We stared at it, presumably all thinking it was some force from outer space come to claim us. We were all members of a large and mystical cast of the musical Hair, which is a grand love letter to our lunar hero… “LOOK AT THE MOON.”

 

Today I sense genuine fear in those around me when a Full Moon comes around.

 

I find it true too. Something does happen. Phones are left behind and a night refuses to end without a fight or a panic. And we blame the completeness of the reflection above. 

 

Crystal Heinemann's The Psychic Soul Meditations does beautiful New Moon and Full Moon podcast episodes that usually focus on the cycles of shedding and regenerating. I walk on those nights and bathe in the moon and breathe  in its light. 

 

I hope you can see it soon.

 

We'll all be looking too.

 

Reflecting.