(no subject)

[rivka]

This evening I found myself wandering my neighborhood in the dark, carrying a little girl dressed only in a T-shirt and a pair of pink underpants with little zebras on them. We were looking for the moon. Her head rested slackly on my shoulder, and her skin against my bare arms was dry and burning hot.

"Where is the moon?" she asked me fretfully. "Is it still sleeping?"

Michael went on a reconnaissance mission to see if the moon might be visible from another street. I carried Alex back to our front steps and sat down, cradling her in my arms. We were mostly hidden by the thicket of morning glories climbing up the railing. We waited for Michael to come back and tell us whether he'd found the moon. We waited for the Advil to kick in and bring her fever down.

She'd come down with it yesterday. All day long, I'd felt as though my parenting skills had suddenly fallen through the cellar floor. Alex, it seemed, could do little more than demand things and weep. When her shirt rode up and I touched her burning back, everything became clear. A dose of Tylenol later, my parenting skills had returned.

She was perkier this morning, as they tend to be - although still prone to suddenly lying down on the floor and asking to go to sleep. I optimistically told Michael to call me if he thought I'd need to take tomorrow off. By 11am, he called to tell me that her temperature was climbing.

I came home at 5:00. When I opened the door, I saw Alex sprawled sleeping on the living room floor, Michael at her side. Her skin was the unhealthy, dirty-pale color of a mushroom. Michael told me that she'd fought sleep all day until she succumbed just before I came home. Bill came by, expecting our biweekly dinner, and after a short anxious conference took himself away again. Alex cried out, fell back asleep, cried out again, woke up. Asked to be carried up to her crib.

Woke up again a little while later, asking for the potty and getting a temperature-taking (which she protested bitterly) and another sweet sticky dose of Advil. Slept for perhaps another fifteen minutes. Woke. "Mommy, I'm awake, I'm awake! I want to go look for the moon."

So that's how we came to be wandering there in the night, half-dressed, on a fruitless search for a moon that hadn't quite managed to crest the surrounding buildings.

"Can we go inside?" Alex asked. "Because I'm a little hot."

We went inside, drank some juice, did some puzzles. Her skin cooled, and some of her energy returned. I eased her into her rocket ship pajamas. Michael slipped outside again, and came back to report that the moon had been sighted - two blocks away, on Eager Street. He scooped Alex up and we walked up the street together.

There it was, hanging enormous and plump and golden in the violet night sky. As gorgeous a harvest moon as a tired, sick little girl could possibly ask for.

Her skin, when I laid my hand against it, was cool. She nestled into Michael's arms and sighed happily. "I really love the moon."

Comments

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Aw. I'm glad you found the moon, and I'm glad it helped.

Maybe I'll put on a shirt and go look for it myself, tonight.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Poor little pet. I'm glad she got her moon.

[crazysoph.livejournal.com]

There's something beautifully quest-like and fantastical about this post, especially the first half - as if I was going to read a story about finding a cure from the Mystical Moon for the Mysterious Illness of The Alex-Child. (Given how you report her cool skin after the sighting, maybe it was the cure. *wink*)

I'm very fond of the moon myself, so I'm glad you both were able to arrange a sighting for Alex. I'm sorry this icon isn't a moon, but it is another nifty sky-feature I hope she'll get a chance to appreciate sometime, too.

Crazy(and often watching the skies, but only because they're already so nifty on their own!)Soph

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I guess Wednesday night was the real harvest moon, but it was close enough to full last night to be very impressive all the same.

She was especially cued in to the moon because either Wednesday or Thursday (I don't remember which) she woke up so early that the moon was still in the sky. I saw it through the window as we came downstairs, hanging just over the roof of the hospital across the street, and I opened the door to show it to her. She was entranced. And disappointed when it went away. "Did the moon come back yet? Can we check?"

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Would you like a little tool that gives moonrise times?

[rivka.livejournal.com]

It's easy enough to Google for it. Where we could use some assistance is in helping Alex to understand that the moon makes regular appearances rather than popping in and out on demand.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I'll see if I can find something. Star Child's moon page is probably a bit beyond her still.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I looked around for "children's moon poetry" in Google, and while there's a lot out there, I didn't find anything that does what you're looking for.

Do you suppose she'd like to look for the moon in the sky when she gets up in the morning for the next week or so? If she looked at roughly the same time of day she'd see how it's waning from full to gibbous to last quarter. Then you could talk about how that means it's going to rise later and later, way after her bedtime. Eventually she won't be able to see it at all in the morning, but then she could watch for it to appear in the early evening sky. She might really get into the phenomenology of it when she realizes she can predict where the moon's going to be the next day.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

I'm glad she found the moon. It is indeed lovely.

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's lovely. Like a real-life version of Ogden's Nut Gone Flake (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogdens'_Nut_Gone_Flake).... [Youtube clip (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD1ZjaUXpiw) - The lunar stuff starts seven minutes in or so]

[ratphooey.livejournal.com]

Poor feverish girl! But what a lovely story.

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

Does she own a copy of Thurber's Many Moons yet?

This is a great story.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Poor little girl. I'm glad she got to see the Moon, and that she felt better for it.

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

Poor little Alex! I hope she feels better today.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

god bless the moon...

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

Lovely

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

This is the kind of story that makes me wish I could curl up in a little ball and purr.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

It's all in where you end the story. I left out the part where she woke up and needed my attention five times between midnight and 7am. That made me want to curl up in a little ball, but not to purr.

[gtrout.livejournal.com]

I'm sure the moon loves her, too.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

See here now, you've made me cry.

[tammylc.livejournal.com]

Awww.