Here’s another one of my earliest memories. It has pathos, and intimacy,
and poetry, and natural beauty, and it took place in a bathroom.
How old was I? I must have been three or four, young
enough to have to ask Mom to take me to the bathroom at night. It was one of
those bright, full moon nights when we didn't need to turn on the light, and I
remember the high bathroom window's curtain was drawn back to let in a breeze.
Mom looked up at the moon and chanted the old poem to me:
"I see the moon,
And the moon sees me.
The moon sees someone
I want to see."
I knew she was thinking about Pop, who was out on the
road truck driving like he always was. It was wistful, and melancholy, and a
bit dreamlike. It was one of the few times when we were little that I actually
had her to myself (we could be clamorous and competing when we were in a herd),
and we shared a moment. Somehow seeing the moon so high over the trees in the
wind amid the wisps of flying clouds so late made me realize that the moon was
always there, whether I was watching it or not, and the idea that Pop somewhere
might be looking at it at the same time, gave me an inkling of how big and
strange the world was.
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