MOONLIGHT INSPIRATION



    We are walking together on a night of the full moon.  Tom says,  “You can see as easily tonight as if we were out in the daylight.  Look. Is that a cat creeping along the edge of the lawns up ahead?”  Quickly, he turned around as if to walk backwards, or else back the way we had come.  “Is it still there?  Is it black?”
    “You’re so superstitious,” I said.  “It’s not black.  It’s gray or brown.  It’s not going to cross our path.  We don’t cross at that corner anyway.  We turn and go right and walk along that street.”  The cat slinks off into the shadows.
    We walk in silence  for quite awhile.  Then we talk about the tiny bit of horizon visible up ahead between  the silhouettes of boulevard trees arching out into the street.  The silver maple leaves glisten in the moonlight, their sharp points etching the night sky.   
    A Pizza Hut Delivery truck pulls up in front of a house.  Light flares as the door opens.  We hear a baby wailing inside.  A man accepts and pays for the pizza and closes the door.   Tom says,  “That’s the house of that couple who work different shifts so the baby doesn’t have to go to daycare.”  
    “I remember seeing her outside walking the baby in the stroller on our morning walks.  She must work a night shift, and he’s taking care of the baby tonight.  “I wonder if the two of them get lonely being apart so much?” I said.
     Across the street, a party is  going on in a garage.  People sit on folding chairs facing the back of the garage.  They don’t see us as we stand for a  few minutes in the dark.  They laugh a lot.  “What are they doing?” I said.  
    Tom said, “They’re taking turns drawing on a big easel.”
    “Oh, I heard clicking noises so I thought they were figuring something out on a big abacus.”   We strolled on in the moonlight, the  sound of laughter and conversation following us down the block.
    This excerpt from my journal entry for August 27, 1988, demonstrates how one can travel back in time to recover a lost memory.  Now my husband and I seldom take these long walks at night.  Age and operations have taken their toll. It is a lovely thing to feel again the companionship of that walk, the feeling of closeness to one’s neighbors, the safety and cameraderie of the community.
    Many people understand the benefits of walking and exercise to relieve stress, but the benefits are doubled for those who also capture the  moments in a journal.  So often we are told the benefits of “living in the moment.”  We hear adjurations to “seize the day.”  These concepts are true and important, but, as one ages, one realizes how many of those moments are lost.  How little time it takes to write a journal entry encapsulating the meaning and worth of the life that one has lived that day.  A photograph can capture a two dimensional depiction of a moment, but writing about it captures one’s feelings and thoughts also.
    My husband and I walked in daylight as well as moonlight, but how enchanted those evening walks seem as I remember: the smell of the Russian Olive trees in full bloom, their scent carrying for blocks on the evening breeze; the silver sheen of the moon reflecting off every available surface; the long shadows of the trees and shrubs stretching across the freshly mowed lawns.
    “Moonlight becomes you”  says an old song.  Moon and June are used as rhymes in many popular love songs.  Moonlight shapes our dreams and inspires tenderness and love reflected in the words of many poems. For example: “The light falls the way the light fell,/And it is not clear,/ In the elm shadows, if it were ourselves, here,/ Or others who were before us.” by David Morton (1886-1957)
    Walk in the moonlight, and then write about it.  Maybe  you’ll be the one to find a new rhyme for moon.  Maybe you’ll be the one to write the next big song hit.  Maybe you’ll be the one who captures a vision of joy and loveliness.