Celebrating the Moments Between the Moments

A  few nights ago, our toddler woke up out of nowhere. It didn’t matter that it was well after midnight or that the grownups had to be up and fresh at 5 am. Our boy was up, the world sparkling all around him and the prospect of life experience like a sweet, ripe fruit that he just had to gobble up. 

Bleary-eyed and raspy-voiced, I scampered into his bedroom and tried to sing him down. Typically, a jazz classic such as Fly Me to the Moon could do the trick, but this time my low-octave cabaret wasn’t cutting it — which of course meant more tears.

Then my husband Arron (our founder/CEO) came in and suggested we bring him into our bedroom, to which I at first said, “absolutely no way.” I’ve seen that show before, and the last thing we needed was an endless middle of the night pillow-fight-fort-assembly-book-a-thon. But the kid was beside himself, so I said what the heck. We scooped him up, brought him across the hall into our room and let him loose on our bed, where he quickly quieted and perched at the headboard like a baby eagle, his gaze fixed out the window. 

“LIGHT!” he suddenly exclaimed, his face lit with wonder and his fat little finger pointing to the sliver of crescent moon that hung like a holiday ornament right over the Spruce treetops. “LIGHT! LIGHT! LIGHT!” he repeated, the revelation of this unexpected luminescence suddenly the most important thing in his life.

And in that moment it dawned on both Arron and I that this child had never before seen a crescent moon, this perfect light-shape stamped right into the periwinkle sky, adorning our treeline in the middle of the night. “That’s the moon,” he kept repeating, each utterance a testimony of his wonderment, his eyes focused on the glowing slice of moonshine that would in time trail out of our view, and at last allow him to relax. 

So, thank you, Arron. Thank you for suggesting (against my initial instinct) that we bring our boy into our room that night, which not only calmed him right away — but more importantly, allowed us to sit there and re-discover the moon with him. Watching you be his dad is as much fun as watching him see the light.

Live wild, Everyone! And here’s to celebrating the father in your life.
Monica

Pictured Above: Father and son on the Homer Spit in Alaska with smiles like crescent moons — to which I shall howl forever.