Getting Solace From The October Moon





My daughter arrives home from school with a slim notebook covered with photos that represent the night — owls, a gibbous moon cut from white paper, a riot of stars.She’s pasted the letters of her name (cut from the pages of a magazine) above the chaos of images. It looks a bit like a ransom note.She explains that she has a new 4th grade assignment. Starting on the 7th which is the first day of the next moon cycle, she is to go outside, observe the moon, then write and draw her observations. She must do this every day throughout the month until the 31st. I am delighted. I run upstairs to retrieve my own notebook — an empty journal with a blue butterfly on the cover. I anticipate (with great enthusiasm) sitting outside in the dark each and every evening for a month, looking up at the sky, and writing about the mysteries of the moon. A week later, armed with pens, notebooks, and flashlights, we make our way outside after dark. Emily, my younger daughter, joins us. She’s six years old and can’t read or write very well, so she brings her crayons and draws the sky on blank printer paper.“The night sky is very clear. lots of stars are popping out tonight. The new moon is impossible to see. The stars are very faint. I saw a planet too.” — Ana Ana’s first entry, carefully printed in neat letters beneath a pencil sketch of the sky, is perfectly, childishly literal. She reads it to me when we are done writing and drawing, then asks me to read mine.“There is no moon, so what’s new? The sky, scrubbed clean, is a wash of darkness sparkling with faint starlight (only an echo of the moon). This house looms, a monolith set in stark relief, all angles and sharpness against the open dark.” — Jackie She asks me why I wrote about our house when I was supposed to write about the moon. I say that since…