sister moon (con’t)

PART TWO

After the sixth ode, my parents got a note from Principal Ott asking if they would come in for a parent-teacher conference. I decided Mrs. Erman wanted to talk to them about transferring me to a gifted school where they sent “exceptionally bright and creative” students who wrote really smashing poetry. I could just hear Mrs. Erman singing my praises, using phrases like “the best student I’ve ever had,” “an absolute treasure,” and “undoubtedly a child genius.”

The moment they walked in the door after the conference I heard my mother exclaim, “A counselor! Really, the nerve of that man! Our child does not need to talk with a counselor!”

The school counselor wasn’t really a counselor at all. I think he was a registered nurse or an engineer who had once taken a college credit in psychology, but I suppose back then he seemed as qualified as anyone for the job. As it turned out, he was a little man who was completely bald and had enormous thick black glasses. He worked all day long in a room filled with those obscenely bright clown pictures that grown-ups always think kids are so crazy about. I, for one, was mortally terrified of clowns. Weird pale men with fat red double mouths drawn over their real mouths and hair that shot out in frightening angles from their heads like gigantic sheep horns. And they were always trying to get into cars together. Lots of them. In little cars. This troubled me. I thought that a whole office filled with pictures of these inexplicable characters wasn’t the thing to set any normal kid at ease, but I figured I’d get in trouble if I mentioned it, so I kept my mouth shut.

We sat for a long time looking at pictures I’d drawn, mostly of my Sister Moon and me. He asked me a lot of questions about the pictures and about my Sister Moon. At first, I was flattered that he was so interested, but after a while, I started to feel that he was being a bit nosy. I mean, really, our family dynamic was none of his business.

“You see, the moon isn’t a she or a he,” he said to me at last, picking up what I thought was a particularly good picture of my Sister Moon and me together in a car. You couldn’t see much of her in it. I had just kind of drawn a big white blob in the passenger seat beside me. “The moon is just a chunk of rock floating in the sky,” he continued. “It’s like a little mini Earth that moves in circles around us. It orbits us like we orbit the sun.”

I stared at him. He was nearly as clueless as the Jupiter employee.

“She’s not really your sister. The moon isn’t a person. It’s not like you and me. Do you understand?”

I ignored him and began coloring another picture. This one would be my Sister Moon and me climbing up the side of a mountain. It was such a courageous theme, it appealed to me immediately. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the counselor frown and adjust the rims of his glasses. Yes, yes, he was definitely looking a little flustered — and were those not beads of sweat I saw forming on his wide and expansive forehead? I was wearing him down.

“I hear from Mrs. Erman that you want to be an astronaut. Well, you’re a very bright student, and I’m sure you’ll indeed become one someday if you choose. And when you are, maybe then you can go to the moon. In fact, you can probably even walk on the moon then because it’s that big.”

I refused to look at him, knowing that if he thought I wasn’t listening he’d eventually go away. That tactic worked with a lot of grown-ups. I’d drawn the mountain and now I was working on my Sister Moon. I had the white crayon in my hand and I was going at it. This would be one of my better pieces.

“Remember how you told me that sometimes the moon disappears, that it gets smaller and smaller until you can’t see it anymore, and then eventually it comes back and gets bigger and bigger? This is because the moon circles around the earth, so at certain times of the month you can’t see as much of it, just part of it. They’re called the phases of the moon. Do you understand? The moon is not a person. The moon is not even alive.”

Something was beginning to itch in the corner of my brain and I tried desperately to ignore it, to concentrate on my drawing, on the white crayon that was beginning to stray wildly from one end of the paper to the other. I was no longer drawing within the lines. The picture became blurry and all the colors bled into one another. My Sister Moon, climbing up the side of the mountain.

The counselor kept talking. That wicked little bald man. He was just jealous, just trying to make my life miserable when all I wanted was for my family and me to be together. I put down my crayon and looked up at him. I couldn’t draw anymore. My eyes were wide and sort of wet around the edges. The world became blurry through my gathering tears.

“But she follows me around. She likes me best.”

“Now listen, the moon doesn’t follow you around. The moon is so high up that you can see it from anywhere. It just looks like it’s following you around because it’s so high up.” He got up suddenly, walked over to his desk, and came back with a stack of colored photos. “Do you want to see some photographs of the moon, up close?”

I’d seen lots of pictures of astronauts preparing to go to the moon. One of them, a man named Neil Armstrong, was from Wapakoneta, Ohio, not too far from my hometown. The counselor brought the photos out and began explaining each one to me — who was in it and what they were doing and when it was taken.

I stared at the astronauts in their frightening white spacesuits. There were tubes weaving in and out of their bodies and their faces were half-hidden by huge bubble helmets. They stood on rocks and craters in the middle of a pale and empty and utterly lifeless landscape made by NASA to mimic the moon’s surface.

“This is what the moon looks like,” the counselor said, pointing at the dusty, jagged ground of each photo.

Was this really her? Could she truly look this way, my Sister Moon?

As I stared at those photos something within me came tumbling down and fell all to pieces; some part of me curled up into a little ball and went to sleep forever. I realized that what the bald little man was saying was true. The moon didn’t follow me anywhere, and the moon had never loved me. The realization struck me like a blow to the chest, and for an instant, I thought I was going to die. I couldn’t speak. I wasn’t sure if I was even breathing. I’d just decided that I probably was indeed dying (was it familial love or a heart attack that did it?), when the thought of Heaven came rushing back to me with visions of harps and hymns and no sweets. The image was so strong that I immediately jolted myself back to consciousness. There was no way I was going to end up there just yet if I could do anything about it. The day was turning out bad enough as it was.

The counselor was now squatting down beside me, his thick black glasses inches from my face. I looked at him through my tears. My head was spinning.

“Are you all right, dear?” he asked me.

I gritted my teeth and nodded. “Yes, sir, I’m fine.” But we both knew I wasn’t.

I was completely inconsolable the entire way home. I was crying so hard I could barely walk. My mother just kept apologizing over and over again.

“I’m sorry, honey. It’s okay now. You don’t have to go back.” She paused, then looked at me hopefully. “Do you want some ice cream?”

I glared at her. Really. As if that would make up for it.

A few moments later we sat outside Paul’s Dairy eating soft-serve. As I shaped my tongue around the ice cream to sculpt out an Elvis hairdo, I tilted my head up at the night sky, reminiscing on my Sister Moon and on the good times we had.

She was still there and always would be. Pale and beautiful, surrounded by those specks of smaller lights, a heavenly army of admirers. She was so lovely, so perfect and round; a full moon that night, as well she should be on the day we parted ways.

I sighed then — for lost thoughts, for broken dreams, for innocent misunderstandings. But I knew there was nothing to be done. My story with her had come to an end and there, that evening, sitting beneath the dimly lit Paul’s Dairy sign with trails of vanilla dripping down my chin and onto my shirt. I wiped my eyes, took a deep breath, and bid her farewell. My good friend, my Sister Moon.

— END —

sister moon

PART ONE

When I was very small, the moon followed me everywhere. I fancied that she had a liking for me, a unique affinity that made her want to go where I went, to see the things I saw. It made me feel special. As far as I could tell, after all, nobody else had a trillion-ton satellite tagging along with them everywhere. She even followed me when we were on vacation. Sometimes she hid behind trees because she was tricky that way, but I always found her, peeking out from behind the branches. Her brightness gave her away every time.

As I grew a bit older, my feelings for the moon developed into a sort of personal attachment. I fancied her to be something like a big sister, and I took to calling her my Sister Moon. I knew for a fact that she loved me best — that much was obvious, because she sat outside my house every night, watching me sleep. I knew that was something only big sisters would do. They were supposed to watch their younger siblings sleep to make sure they were still breathing, and if for some reason they stopped (I wasn’t quite clear on exactly how this would happen, but I presumed that it was either fear or heart disease), you were supposed to get frantic and rip out your hair and vow to fulfill your little sister’s dreams and wishes. That was how things worked.

When I was in second grade, I decided I’d eventually go to college with my Sister Moon, and though even my seven-year-old mind dimly realized the complexities involved, I didn’t trouble myself with the details. I figured only that it would entail my becoming an astronaut and being away from home quite a bit. I hoped that my family wouldn’t mind this arrangement, and on occasions when I was seized by a fit of rational thinking, I’d simply grit my teeth and say to myself that even if they did object strongly and say things like “never” or “over my dead body,” my Sister Moon and I would go to college together anyway. I fancied that our sisterhood would be so strong and so touching that they’d forgive us and start to cry and immediately give us their approval. Ultimately, however, I decided it didn’t matter if they objected because we were so resolved in our bond that nothing could stop us. If they tried, I knew that I’d simply die, and although I still didn’t comprehend death, I had a strong enough grasp of the notion to understand that once it happened to me I’d be transported to Heaven where there were no bicycles or movie theaters, and where you were forced to spend all your time playing harps and singing hymns. I found all this so curious that one day I spent an entire afternoon pondering whether or not I could still eat things like candy and ice cream in Heaven, and I finally came to the devastating conclusion that sweets were probably not allowed there because they gave you cavities, and it somehow just didn’t seem appropriate for people to be romping around Heaven singing praises and hallelujah and whatnot while their teeth were rotting away.

I know. I was a kid with a lot of thoughts. Anyway, back to my story.

I took to spending the evenings sitting on the porch banister, gazing up at my Sister Moon and tracing her figure in the air before me. I liked her best when she was full because she always seemed much closer, looming in the sky just beyond my reach. At the time, I didn’t think much of the stars. They were sort of accessories to my Sister Moon.

Every month or so she would start getting smaller and smaller, and then for an awful day or two, she wouldn’t be there at all. Those few days were always the worst for me. I harbored a secret fear each time she disappeared that she might never come back, and those days I would spend more time than usual outside on the porch, straining my eyes against the darkness for that thin sliver of white which was proof that my Sister Moon was merely hiding. When she came back I was all laughter and smiles. To celebrate her return I would run out onto our side yard and dance under her, singing and shouting at the top of my lungs until my family or the neighbors began to complain about all the noise.

My second-grade teacher was a lovely older woman named Myrtle Erman. She was an extremely kind and gifted educator, and she loved books of all types. It was there in her classroom that I came across A History of Our Sky: The Moon, which had photos of the moon and the stars and stuff from different places all over the world. I spent many an hour looking through that book at pictures of my Sister Moon, and there were quite a few that I especially liked. My Sister Moon rising over the pyramids. My Sister Moon hovering just to the left of the torch of the Statue of Liberty. My Sister Moon sitting atop Mount Vesuvius. My Sister Moon looked good in any picture. She was very photogenic.

Anyway, The Moon was one of those really big books that pretty much took up half the table. It was very expensive because it was very heavy. When guests came to the school, all the refreshments had to be crowded onto one end of the table so that the guests could be all admiring of the big book at the other end. If anybody wanted to take a look at the pictures it was a real problem, because when you opened the book it was so big that nothing else would fit on the table at all. I couldn’t understand why the school system would want to own something so impractical; it sort of fell along the same lines as that cabinet of nice pencils we were never permitted to use. Just the same, I felt that nobody would mind me snipping a few pictures out of the book, and barely anyone besides me ever looked through it.

I spent an entire recess going through it page by page, cutting out my favorite pictures. When Miss Hammond, an assistant secretary to Principal Ott, found me sprawled on the classroom floor, surrounded by tattered pages and cutouts of the moon, she couldn’t stop crying.

Overreaction, that’s what Miss Hammond was all about. I just don’t think she understood sisterly bonds.

Out of pure malice, she confiscated the remains of The Moon along with all the pictures I’d cut out. I don’t know what she did with them and frankly, she wouldn’t tell me. I never saw them again. I felt that this was cruel and spiteful of her, and told her so in as many words, but she just said that I was being cheeky and threatened to give me a spanking. A spanking?? She was always threatening to give kids a spanking. I guess she just didn’t realize how much it weakened her authority to just throw the threat around like that.

In any case, I became very vocal about not having any moons to put on my stuff. At first, my complaints met with little success. Miss Hammond, it seemed, was still sore about  The Moon incident. I didn’t let this faze me though, and I started bringing up the issue at the snack table every afternoon. I’d wait for a lull in the conversation and the snack trades to be complete and then I’d clear my throat, look about expectantly, and announce, “I need some moons.” Often my classmates pretended like they hadn’t even heard me, and I would have to repeat myself several times before they’d respond. “Eat your cookie,” they’d finally say. Or sometimes, “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

It took a while to convince anyone that I was serious, but in the end, my hard work paid off. One afternoon, my mother gave me one of those glow-in-the-dark star sets that included a little moon. Victory! I threw the stars all over a notebook and put the moon directly in the center. Then I crawled underneath a blanket and stared hard at the sad, lone little moon.

Something was wrong. Just one wouldn’t be enough. I needed more.

On my next trip downtown with my mom, I was caught by a salesman in the school supply aisle at Jupiter, stuffing all the moons from the individual bags into a separate packet, which I intended to purchase. This wasn’t easy, as it involved digging through a bagful of stars to find the single little moon in each one, but I was getting along pretty well when the employee appeared and asked me what I thought I was doing. I looked up at him. There were glow-in-the-dark stars all over the floor.

“I only want the moons,” I explained patiently.

He stared at me for a moment. “You can’t do that,” he said. “That’s not acceptable. Each set is supposed to have only one moon.” He took the packet from me and started putting the moons back into the star sets, all the while rambling on about how my parents should’ve taught me not to open up things in stores. I knew he was probably just jealous at not having thought of doing the same thing himself. A bag full of glow-in-the-dark moons. Who wouldn’t be excited by such a possibility?

Just then I realized the implication of my thought and my heart started to pound faster. I clenched my fists, overcome by a wave of jealousy so powerful I almost fell over. How dare he! I was just about to kick him in the shins as hard as I could and run for my life when Mom arrived. She gave me that “Just wait until we get home” look, and dragged me away down the aisle, apologizing over her shoulder to the employee. I gave him my hardest shooting dagger looks, but I didn’t resist being dragged away. I wouldn’t have regretted fighting him over my Sister Moon, even though he was more than twice my size.

That evening I realized that I’d exhausted all other possibilities, so I decided at last that I could only rely on my talents to get the pictures I needed of my Sister Moon. I resolved to try drawing her in Mr. Emler’s art class. It was difficult at first. I mean, yes, I could get the shape of her just right (I always drew her when she was full), but how to capture the beauty of her face, the shadows of light and dark that my brother Dan once told me were called craters?

Incidentally, I had a strong revulsion to that word. It sounded too harsh to me, tantamount to saying that my Sister Moon was riddled with scars or caverns, and I insisted thenceforth on calling them beauty marks, a word which I’d heard Mom use about a mole on the side of her friend’s face.

“That’s a lovely picture you’ve drawn, Diane,” Mr. Emler said one afternoon as he passed by my desk. “Is it a marble?”

A marble?? I was so offended I could barely speak. “It’s the moon,” I said at last, half-debating whether or not to leap up onto my chair and growl in his face.

“What are these colored swirls here?” he asked, placing a finger on my drawing.

Any representation of my Sister Moon, even a crude one done in pencil and crayon, was in my eyes next to holy. I couldn’t abide him touching my picture and quickly yanked the paper away.

“They’re her beauty marks,” I blurted out. How could he be so obtuse? That was completely self-evident. A marble indeed. Mr. Emler just couldn’t recognize true beauty. I intoned that his attitude was directly related to him being unmarried, so I decided instead that I ought to pity him, a poor deprived man that he was, surrounded only by other teachers and an occasional parent or two. In my most magnanimous tone, I conceded, “It could be a marble, though — a really beautiful marble.”

“Yes, of course.” He sounded distracted and moved quickly on to the next student. I felt a little surge of pride. He’d obviously found me very intimidating.

By the end of the month, nearly everything I owned was plastered with my drawings of my Sister Moon. They were bold and brilliant. Anybody could see that they screamed child prodigy. Much to the relief of everyone within earshot, I stopped complaining at the snack table.

I had such success with the artwork that I decided to turn my obvious talents to poetry. All told, I wrote at least seven or eight odes to my Sister Moon. Mrs. Erman was delighted with the first one. As she read it, she turned away for a moment and made a little noise. I think she was probably crying, and she didn’t want me to see because grown-ups aren’t supposed to cry in front of kids — especially if you’re a teacher. After all, that degrades your authority. But when she turned back around her eyes were completely dry and she just said, “Very good. I think you might cut out one of the extra ‘evers’ on the last line, though.” I think she was secretly hiding her admiration. She had probably never written anything so poetic and so utterly moving in her life.

Ode To The Moon

I really really love you.

I hope you love me too.

You are so pretty in the sky.

I hope you never die.

You are round and really white,

You are such a lovely sight.

You watch over me like a sister,

So please don’t ever find a mister.

Let’s stay together.

Forever, ever, ever, ever. 

That day she sent a note home with me addressed to my parents reading that I was “exceptionally bright and creative,” and that I had “a very fantastic imagination.”

— To Be Continued —