Of course we were having a party, everyone I knew was going to celebrate in some way. The Bromleys, across the road, who were always so grim and dour, who wore dark clothes in sunny weather, even they had decorations in their front window. For anyone under twenty it was very special, their First Moon Day.
I remember my First Moon Day. I was just eighteen. Mum had talked about her Moon Days, how they used to celebrate when they were young. And, of course, there were photos and films and so many books and stories about Moon Days.
The Moon rises just once every twenty-one years, although some times it’s twenty-two, or twenty. I’m sixty now, so this is my third Moon Day and there is a sadness to it. My mother and father are dead, and I wonder if I will see another. Next time I’ll be eighty-one.
What begins as a novelty, as a huge, exciting event in someone’s life, soon becomes a more thoughtful occasion. Children have grown up and gone.
I’ll try and be less reflective and just enjoy the sheer beauty of it, the wonder of this huge rock, just under a third the size of our planet, as it comes into view on the horizon, as it seems to roll along the sea before rising up, like a balloon, somehow aloft, it hangs there. And we hang there too, of course. This is what Moon Day reminds us. We are a sphere too, floating alone in space.
It remains in the night sky for just under a week, and as its pearl light illuminates the darkness, the festival continues, we feast, we gather on hilltops and then, on the last evening, we gather to wish it farewell, its extreme elliptical orbit taking it away from the Earth and into the darkness of space.
yawn the post 