and the moon and me

A couple weeks ago, I was driving home from a trip into "town" (a.k.a. the largest city in the county, a.k.a. the place that has stoplights).  A giant, full, buttermilk-colored moon was hanging pendulously above the mountains.  That kind of double-take moon, where you're not sure if it's actually the moon or some gas station sign.


I wanted a photo of it.  Maybe to post it to Facebook, or at least record the moment.  But it's hard to get a photo that captures that grandeur on your smartphone, while sitting at a stoplight (one of the many).

...to the left of the yellow "Payless Shoe Source" sign...

Then the moment was slipping away.  The clouds were starting to hide it and my route was taking me south of it.

Then I became aware of a subtle anxiety about not being able to capture the moment.  About not being able to have a beautiful picture to accurately capture the night, in my fifth month of living here, when that buttermilk moon sat like a gift on the mountain tops.

I don't have a marvelous memory to begin with.  Turns out this is a symptom of ADHD, which normalizes it for me and makes me feel less weird.  I've always valued mementos of my past.  I can go through a box of papers from 1993 and be reminded of a host of things about that year, that had previously been absent from my brain (or at least inaccessible).  So wanting a picture of this moon is understandable.

But that little brow-furrowing moment of anxiety/disappointment/longing was unsettling.  The alternative to logging a photo-documentation of the moment is to BE in the moment.  I have a much more difficult time just being.

RSTS ("Random, Slightly Tangential Stories" aka RSTS, might be a Heidi copyrighted phrase):  Toward the end of my Peace Corps service, I had a French boyfriend who lived in the capital city.  He treated me well, bought me dinners, had his cook make us breakfast, etc., etc.  It was so nice to have someone take care of me after taking care of myself, and trying to take care of others, for nearly two years.  One night we were sitting out by the pool of a big hotel.  It was balmy, we had the place to ourselves, so peaceful.  I felt that itchy feeling of wanting to observe the moment or discuss it.  "It's so beautiful out here, isn't it?"  In his French accent, he replied, "Yez... so maybee you shood jest enjoy eet, instead ov talking about eet."  Ouch.  And yet the most Zen thing he ever said to me.

(Remind me to tell you another RSTS about Celestine in Africa...)

 
So, I tried to just be with the disappearing grandeur of the moon as I drove across my big round valley, back to my red dollar house.  The more I tried to be, the more sad I became.  The more still I got, the more I felt.  I was reflecting on my life here.  And how I probably wouldn't be here if my sister hadn't passed.  And while I'm glad to be here and ready to live here, I still wish she was really alive.  Not just alive sometimes in my dreams, where I have to realize, whether dreaming or waking, that she's dead.  But actually alive again.  And that made me cry.  And feel kinda lousy in my gut.

And then it passed.

Now I've written about it, and read what I've written.  And damn it if this isn't an even better way to capture what the moon gave me that night.  Hmmm...




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