My Moon

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This very real feeling of inferiority is magnified by his childish sensitivity and it is this state of affairs which generates in him that insatiable, abnormal craving for self-approval and success in the eyes of the world. Still a child, he cries for the moon. And the moon, it seems, won't have him!"

THE LANGUAGE OF THE HEART, p. 102

The night is dark and silent as their car meanders through the Texas Hill Country. She stares out the back window and watches the shapes of the trees against the sky. The air in the car is heavy – thick with anger, resentment, fear. That’s why she sat in the back – to put as much of a buffer between them as possible.

She knows she’s drunk. Her mother told her that and justified his anger, and she supposed there was some truth in that. It was plausible, at least. But she also knew it was something else. He’d made plans when she’d said she was going to stay at her mother’s, and when she changed her mind, it had ruined his plans.

She wondered distractedly, in a mostly detached sort of way who she was, and if they had planned to be in her bed. Their bed. She had come to peace with the idea some while back, in a sick way it even brought her some relief, to let go of at least some of her wifely duties. But for some reason today, she had latched onto it when she saw it was a thorn in his side, and even twisted it a little.

Maybe because she was drunk.

“Look! My moon!” The innocent little excited voice pierced through her dark thoughts.

“That’s everyone’s moon, baby. God made it.” She looked in adoration at her little girl – her big brown hazel eyes full of wonder, her sweet head with only whisps of blonde hair still.

“No, my moon!” she insisted.”

“It’s the whole world’s moon.”

“No, mama. My moon.”

It went that way for almost an hour, gentle banter filling the silence. She knew it probably annoyed him, but she was grateful to have that little voice push back the angry silence to the front side and her dark thoughts to the very edges of her thoughts, where she almost forgot them.

Finally, after she heard a large sigh, she relented. “Okay, baby. It is your moon,” and the baby girl was happy.

And that's how I gave my daughter the moon.