No More Moon

Grammy was talking to Sofia on the telephone when she announced to Grammy that she wanted to talk to Grandpa. No sooner did I get on the phone that she announced "I don't want you ever to send the moon to me again!" "OK," I said. "Why?" "Because it came to Washington last night and I don't ever want to see it again in my life. Stop sending it!" I was a bit flabbergasted. I turned to Grammy. She whispered: "Sofia woke up last night after having a nightmare, and full moon was out her window and it scared her." Sofia said to me over the phone: "Do you hear me Grandpa...no more moon."

(Some time ago, when Sofia was at our house, we couldn't see the moon outside my house, so we went and chased it...got up high on a hill and found it low and shiny on the horizon. For the next few nights we did that. Soon we became known around the house as the "moon chasers". And before she left Sofia made me promise to send the moon to Washington, DC were she lived. And I promised that I would.)

"No more moon, Grandpa," Sofia reiterated over the phone.

"Well, I don't know," I replied. "The moon's got a mind of it's own. Now that I've been sending it to Washington, it might like going there. I'll talk to it, though. And when you come out her for Christmas, we'll go out in the car together, we'll find the moon together, and we'll hug and we'll talk to it. Sometimes when you're hugging someone, the big, bright moon doesn't seem so scary."

There was a pause at the other end of the phone.

"No more moon," she said. But her voice had softened and her tone seemed so much less urgent.

I wanted to hug her right there and then.

But the distance allowed only a voice: "I love you," I said.

"I love you, too, Grandpa," she said. Pause. "But no more moon."

Postscript: Two nights later, Sofia changed her mind when talking with Grammy again. Grammy sang several times "I watch the moon, the moon watches me...." Sofia joined in for several more choruses. All is well again in Sofia'a relationship with the moon.