Moonstruck

There’s a family story about my mom and the moon. She was two, and the moon was full, and she toddled up the hill to catch the big yellow ball. Her father trailed behind, wondering how far she’d go. And he was there when she gave up.

Except she didn’t. All her life, she’s followed the moon, watching it change from a tiny sliver to a half moon to a full moon and back again. Even now at age 97.

Especially now.

“I can sleep pretty much anytime,” she tells me. “Except at night.”

So she moves from window to window, chasing after the moon as it wanders around in the sky.

“Last night, I found it outside the kitchen window,” she tells me.  “High up in the sky.”

Unlike my mom, I’ve given the moon scant attention, the exception being its cyclical challenge for my classrooms.

“Full moon tonight,” a teacher would say in the lounge at lunch. “Get prepared for tomorrow.”

We all knew what she meant—that students would be less willing to work, more unsettled, and more likely to get unhinged.

And teachers aren’t alone. Nurses expect spikes in admissions, police in arrests, and counselors in suicide attempts. The Lunar Effect, some people call it. Aristotle believed in it, saying that if the gravitational strength of the moon could make tides by pulling oceans of water, surely it could change the flow of blood in the brain.

Modern scientists scoff at this. Study after study has proven Aristotle wrong. This thinking, researchers say, shows a confirmation bias. Teachers and police and counselors are seeing what they expect to see.

And scientists should know. In my mom’s lifetime, they’ve walked on the moon, analyzed 842 pounds of moon rock, and photographed the moon’s “dark,” unseen side. The moon, they’ve found, is a dusty, rocky place, covered with craters and debris from comets and asteroids.

But to my mom, the moon’s a wonder, a sight to behold. It’s beautiful enough to cast a silver glow and strong enough to pull an ocean from shore to shore.

And you never know what it might do—wax or wane, climb high or dip low, hide behind clouds or illumine the night. It peeks through the kitchen window one night and into the living room the next. Sometimes silver; other times, blood red.

My mom couldn’t catch the moon when she was two. And at 97, she knows it’s to be admired, not caught.

As for me—now that I no longer deal with a hundred middle school kids when the moon is full, I might just take a look at what my mom’s been chasing.