The Moon and I

It’s hard to recreate a time when there were no words, only feelings.

Moon~~Tree~~Clouds.

These are the first things I remember. Crib slats casting black shadows on a summer smooth sheet. White face through spreading branches. Next, a perfect silver disc lending its sheen to arching branches. The sugar maple that grew behind Grandparents house was enormous. 

Perhaps, long ago, it had been brought west to Ohio by a homesick Yankee.

Of course, I knew nothing of that. All I knew was that the spreading maple was good to see, the harmony of black and white, the leafy patterns, a vision which sounded in my head like a clear note. I was here, entirely secure. Outside the broad leaves with their sharpened edges were barely moving against a velvet sky. Moon face gazed down serene; a cloud edged in rainbow and silver passes.

No wonder I am who I am.

Ghosts of Abbott Road, Ellington, CT

In the next room, women’s voices. They were the ones who cared for me, two young, one old, getting ready for bed next door in the spacious bathroom, big enough to accommodate one woman at the dressing table mirror, a bather in the claw foot tub, one at the sink running water--or perhaps even seated --the “watercloset” was one of the first improvements my Grandfather had made after purchasing this house. He had called his home “a girl’s dorm” for years, and now here I came, the newest addition, another little female--the one now wondering in the room full of moonlight.

Two Juliets, 1945

Sleep was impossible bathed in silver, danced over by mutable leaf shadow. There was nothing frustrating or lonely about it. I didn’t need to cry and call them to me, even though I knew they would come. After all, the women were happy. I was fed and dry and comfortable.

Besides, outside my window was the venerable breathing tree and a full moon.  

~~

Juliet Waldron

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http://amzn.to/1YQziX0  A Master Passion   ISBN: 1771456744

Happy Birthday, Alexander Hamilton!