A Story for the New Moon

I go out to the backyard and look at the sky; maybe see some falling stars.  My daughter is insistent on coming out with me.  I get ornery and am wearing her sweater and won’t give it back.  I don’t know why.  I feel like I want to be alone-like I must do this alone.  I stand in the yard and she is by the back door, separate from me.  She starts crying and goes inside and I am out there alone feeling mean and wondering why I always mess things up.  I go inside and ask her to come out with me but she won’t.  So I say, “Fine.  I am not going to beg!”  I leave in a snit.

Back outside I look up to the sky and ask for a sign.  I am looking for some sort of ceremony of healing where women come together and I can’t find it.  Nothing comes to mind, but the sky looks amazing on this crisp late summer night.  I see her bedroom light come on and I see her moving around her room; into the closet and back out.  Putting on a sweater with long sleeves and I think she must be cold from standing outside so long while I stubbornly left her standing there alone.

She comes outside angry, muttering.  Walks out to find me alone in the dark in the back yard, searching for this elusive wisdom and it hits me full on what a fool I have been.  I ask, “Why are you here?” And she says, “I don’t know.” She starts to cry again.

I realize she is my community.  She is my ceremony.  She heals me.  Her presence is a soothing balm to my uncertainty.  I say something ridiculous like “We are going to heal the world.” We embrace.   She doesn’t say anything but I can feel that she is guarded; like she wonders what is wrong with my mental state –out here in the dark and cold, searching the sky and babbling about saving the world.  She is my sign that I don’t have to do this alone.  I am part of her community as she is of mine.

We hold each other for a long time.  We don’t say much more.  She sees a shooting star and makes a wish.  We find the big dipper and a diamond shape of four stars and I tell her they are the door to Heaven.  I go to bed satisfied that I have found a ceremony of sorts and that it was a success in spite of me and my actions.

Margaret