steadfast moonlight

I drove into the full moon on my way home and I remembered when the orb held me in such awe, when I would sit in the backyard as a child, staring and knowing for certain it and my soul were connected; knowing there was magic in moonlight.

I felt none of that driving home.

She asked me the other day if there was a time I had ever felt very happy. My lips were silent while my brain raced around decades, attempting to pull out the period of time I was happy for more than mere moments or days. I said I would have to think about it.

The question, a revelation due to my lack of instant response, was a puzzle I gnawed at. Not wishing for a life revue to come up with something, anything, I remembered 19. Being 19 and being loved and being part of a team with dreams and plans until there was no longer a team and then it was back to me.

It has continued to be me even when it wasn't and the sudden knowing of not knowing how to reclaim the freshness and exuberance of being 19, and the vision of magic in moonlight.

Now, the Crone is tapping my door. So many things have ended. She tells me not everyone has lived their greatest happiness before she comes to call. She speaks of magic, but now it is practical. What was exuberance outside is now waiting to be seen and known as residing within. Residing within, she repeats.

Let happiness be felt in new ways. It will suddenly be sustainable. All I have learned and striven to understand of magic and things unseen live within my cells. If it all feels less shiny now, less wondrous, it is because it is too close to home. Rather, it is home. In mindfulness, in silence, in wearing my mother's ring.

Content is the new happy, she says. Self possession is the new happy. The world is within and now known to be such.

I am the steadfast moonlight.