Moonrise

Tonight is a full moon, the second we’ve had here in New Zealand. Three moons ago my mother dropped us off at Dulles Airport to begin the long journey to New Zealand. That was a bittersweet goodbye—the kids were cheerful and distracted by the airplane presents Grandma Catherine had brought them, and their easy love of her made me homesick before we ever left. I cried as she drove off—one of the most bleak moments of the trip. Just moments after she pulled away from the curb, my phone rang, and it was Mom, telling me to look out the window at the moonrise. We all looked out the wall of glass and saw the full moon rising over the airport. It was golden and enormous, and it filled me with the kind of peace that I only get from seeing something in the natural world. I knew that this journey would be ok, somehow. The people I loved would look up at the same moon (although at different times and from different angles) and we would be warmed by the same sun. We would be connected in important ways, the earth and the cycles somehow holding us together. And it’s true, those cycles do hold us together. When I see the moon rise over the hills here, full and bright enough to keep us awake at night, I think of it rising over the industrial park outside Dulles Virginia. I think of the love it would take for my mother to cheerfully drive us to the airport and then to call to point out a magnificent moon even as we were moving half way around the world. And I think of beauty and love that is stable throughout the world, even as it changes over time. So, this is just to ask you all to look out the window whenever your night happens to be, and know that the moon is beautiful tonight