By Willa Umansky PZ ‘27

The moon, the moon, the moon. She struck me on what has become my habitual walk home from the Grove House every Wednesday night, colored in a blissful post-Outback meeting haze. As I strolled home past the gates of Atherton and beyond the mighty Shakedown, I gazed at the moon and remembered having looked up quite recently and Her having been completely full, but now it’s as though a magic little eraser has been taken to Her. Her appearance then reappearance sparked thoughts of how She sees so much more of me than I, Her. The least I can do is look at Her. It’s quite inconsiderate of me (or us, or maybe it’s just me who gets so selfish and caught up that I can ignore the moon) to not permit Her the millisecond it takes to gaze up at the sky.

I thought about how She reflects the passage of time at a much more rapid rate than I feel it dissipating behind me. When you’re walking on the beach, close enough to the water that as you lift up your feet the sand creates a perfect mold and you know that mold will disappear naturally, slowly expanding its way back to normalcy. When I notice the moon for the first time in a while, or see just how brutally fast Her cycle cycles through, She is the tide that creeps up and quickens the pace that the mold of my feet becomes imperfect and by the second time she strikes, what I thought would take time to breath out what had been is already gone. I also thought about how She gets drawn, erased, and drawn again endlessly. Is it tiring to lose yourself and gain it back every month? It must be. I want to be a writer, I think. I don’t know what I want to write, but I think I want to call myself a writer. I want to live forever. I don’t think I actually do. I want to relive my childhood, this I know. I want to relive all of my pain to make it real again. I want my parents to live forever. I want everyone I love to live forever and I want time to be putty in my hands, for it to move at my whim and to oscillate as I please. I want the moment I got my dog tattooed on my chest. I want the feeling of being at camp when I was little ingrained in my palms so I can hold it to my heart when the memory feels too distant.

The lack of permanence of it all kills me. It fucking kills me to think about. The moon can’t stay the same. Who knows, maybe every month She thinks She’s trying harder than the last to stay fully there and secretly She hopes it could finally work, even though She knows deep down that She’s just not meant to stay the same forever. And She’s there and She knows that, but we don’t. She’s completely and utterly alone. I would hate it if I knew I was there and no one else did. But the poor moon can’t evolve to be better, She can’t even grow like I can. She’s just forced to endure the cyclical hell that someone wrote in the stars for Her. 

What am I even talking about? Oh yeah, the moon, the moon, the moon. I want to be a kid again. I miss my mommy and I miss my daddy. I miss them in a way where I don’t think about it often, but when I do, my heart aches and I’m forced to swallow tears. Maybe the left side of the moon swallows tears during the heartaching part of the month that She doesn’t get to see us, or doesn’t get seen by us. Maybe She misses us. Maybe She watches us like a kid peeking out through their bedroom door, staring longingly at the grownup dinner party that’s inconceivably still going at this unconscionable hour. If I have kids I think I’ll be jealous of their ability to live childhood. I miss shabbat dinners when I was little. Fuck me, I really miss my parents. I miss being little with my parents.

I wonder if the moon misses us? Or maybe the question is whether the moon misses being whole? I’d like to hope the moon enjoys Her ebb and flow, that it makes Her happy. I hope She never feels unwhole, that She knows She’ll come back. I hope She knows it’s natural and Her story was written to be just as it was and that we miss Her when She’s gone, but we understand that She’ll be back. I hope She isn’t frustrated by Her inability to escape the infinite journey of starting anew once a month. I hope She embraces it and lives Her story for what it is.

I can’t project how She sees herself and how every stage She lives fosters different levels of self love, because I’m supposed to be whole but I long for the days of my crescent moon, rather than appreciating the wane or wax of where I am. I can assume She feels most glorious as Her whole self, but then how can I not feel that about myself? When I see the moon begin to wane I wonder when I will be whole too, wishing there was a calendar that had a little predictor for how whole I will be each day of each month or each day of my life for that matter. Did I suddenly become whole on my 18th birthday? Certainly not. Will I be whole the day I graduate college? When I get my first adult apartment? Even if it’s shitty and I need to call my mom to learn if olive oil expires or when I should clean my fridge? I’m not whole, because if I were, would I still mourn for the crescent of me that shined at the dinner table and fell spellbinded in the lights of the shabbat candles? But if the warmth that radiated from my dad’s hand as he held my forehead — during the blessing over the children that I pretended to hate — is so far away, then I’m much closer to being full than I was so long ago. I stared at the moon on my walk home from the Grove House and it made me want to think about Her more. The moon and all Her beauty, the moon, the moon, the moon.