The night sky of the last few nights reminded me of the inequity of my writing where Son #2 is concerned. Maybe that’s because when you’re with Son #2, you’re usually feeding him snacks or kissing his head from his latest head wound. That kid has an innate inability to successfully avoid cutting boards, table corners, walls, and floors. Furthermore, when he sustains a head injury, the first thing that comes to his mind is the pantry.

Back to the night sky; Son #2 has a thing for the moon. Not a “Wow, that’s cool. Can you explain to me why it’s so bright?” type of thing. More of a “Oh my frickin’ God this is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen even though I saw it yesterday, but this is so much better than that and I think I just crapped myself!” type of thing. Anytime we’re outside, any time we get out of a car, the question is as reliable as rain in Seattle on the 4th of July. “Moon?” Everything in the sky is the moon. He sees the sun, it’s the moon. You can’t dissuade to the appropriate classification. Well, everything but clouds which he actually calls “rainbows.”


With the recent clearing trend in the weather pattern around the Seattle area, there was a larger prominence of visibility of the moon. This isn’t good for those of us who live with him. Factor in that it’s much lower in the sky and we have a recipe for Son #2 losing his mind when he sees this lunar body.

With our new house, we tend to eat our meals in the formal dining room. This gives both our children the uninterrupted freedom to stargaze while eating or be distracted by the wind blowing through the trees outside. The windows are large enough to see an unobstructed view of the sky. The other night after dinner, Son #2 was standing and staring out of one of these windows. You could almost feel the electricity starting to charge through the air in the house as he spooled up to 100,000 volts.

“Da-dee, Da-dee, Da-dee…” I hear the rhythmically excited chant began as a dull roar and crescendo into an all out shrill scream of excitement while I’m washing the dishes in the kitchen. Trying to ignore the Tasmanian devil-like spinning and flailing, I continue washing. When the screaming reaches a feverish level where I’m concerned about windows shattering and the police showing up, I humor his freakish request and join him in the dining room. “Moon! Moon! Moon!” as he gestures out the window toward the eastern sky.

With a quick glance out, I note that the moon is out there but opt to torment his obsession being that he’s crossed a sanity threshold and lost his mind. I repeatedly ask him, “Where?” while looking the other way. This does nothing but further infuse the shrill screams and gesturing with more emphatic yelling and pointing.

The pointing and screaming continues while I look the opposite way. "See! See! See!" Now you’d think that frustrating him probably isn’t the smartest thing to do given that the freakish screams he yields when upset can wake the deadest of corpses from miles away; but it’s still fun. Giving in to my son’s frustration/excitement of the moment, I turn to look and acknowledge the moon that he’s spotted for the 50th time in one night and he’s finally satisfied. It’s funny, he’s just as excited to show me the moon for the 50th time as he was the very first time he realized he had a winky and told his mother. Call it pride in discovery. Like he claimed both for his own great nation.

This went on for the next few hours and days. And after each acknowledgment, he’d continue into nursery rhyme, “Cow jump!” and “Dish, spoon!” Each leading to a clap and a scream in life changing excitement. I never thought I’d be wishing for clouds to slow down the excitement. Not that it would change anything as everything in the sky is the moon. He has an absolute adoration of the moon.


Maybe he’s in touch with something we aren’t. Like that the moon is viewed in terms of the rhythmic life of the cosmos and is believed to govern all vital change. The cyclical process of disappearance and appearance of the moon is the basis of widespread association of the moon with the land of the dead, the place to which souls ascend after death, and the power of rebirth. Nope.

Maybe he knows that the moon has the basis for many amorous legends and some superstitions (madmen were once considered to be moonstruck, hence the term lunatic) and is particularly important in the practice of astrology. Nah.

Maybe this obsession will lead him in to astronomy or to being an astronaut. After all, there is that small subset of people who think we never made it to the moon and it was a NASA conspiracy. Maybe he could prove those asses wrong and reestablish our space exploration dominance. That’s a stretch.

Or maybe it’s just simple obsession with something bright and shiny. After all, does it have to be that deep? Oh well, Son #2 may make the news at 11:00pm one day because of this.