Thoughts on Moons and Moms and Moods

Ah, the moon.

Some would say the moon is what keeps lovers together, two can look upon it miles and miles apart, and yet it’s the same for both.

Peoples of all kinds have used the moon to mark the passage of time throughout the world, just look at the Chinese lunar calendar, or any of the many others.

But, for some of us, who go by the name of “women”, the moon often marks other things. Native American women would call their periods their “moon time”.

In fact, most women even today, will receive their periods on or around either the monthly full or new moon. Me, I’m a full moon gal. With the waxing of the moon comes PMS and all the other fun things wimminfolk get to enjoy with this monthly “gift”.

I think it’s cruelly ironic my period comes with the full moon. Like I’m not feeling nuts enough already with the red tide, but Mother Nature wants to hurl the weirdness of the full moon at me as well? Yeah, thanks for that.

With PMS usually comes moodiness, and sometimes it catches me off-guard. Sometimes I completely forget I’m on the verge of the red tide and don’t understand why my emotions are so awry.

This weekend sort of got away from me, emotionally. Saturday was a big day, the day I’ve sort of been putting off for nine years. The day I went out to collect an 1880s oak hall stand of my mother’s from a casual friend of hers I’d never met, who’d been hanging on to the piece for the last 13 years.

The whole day was about nine hours of frustrating work for myself and beloved GayBoy, who came along to help, and I thought I was really too tired to feel a thing Saturday night… I kind of was trying to ignore the fact that I’d finally picked this thing up the weekend smack-dab between the anniversary of mom’s cancer find and her birthday, but maybe my timing could’ve been better.

After all, I guess I underestimated the power of the past and the pull of unresolved emotions.

The plan was, I’d pick up this piece and then I’d sell it to make serious cash for doing a few things I want/need, like pimping up my computer and my place, which is a small apartment and really doesn’t have the room for all these awesome antiques I have, let alone another one… and a thousand or two goes a long way for a lowly writer chick in North America’s second most expensive city. Mm, money.

…So I was stunned when emotion washed over me like I couldn’t have imagined. The piece was sitting there, literally in the centre of my living/dining area, and I couldn’t avoid staring at it as I recuped energy on the sofa. I got up, wandered over to it, wrapped my hands around the scarves bar on it while I closed my eyes. Suddenly, this electric wave felt like it pulsed through me and I had this whirlwind of recollections swirling around me, all centring around me as a young Steff of 10-12 years old.

Back then, I had a pretty ambitious hat collection for a kid. We had this awesome sunroom, probably 20×20′, and the centrepiece was this hallstand. Two walls and the hallstand were inundated by MY hats. Everything from sombreros and military hats to feathered showgirl hats from the 1920-40s.

And it just never meant anything to me then. Of course my mom indulged my hat collection. That’s what moms did, right?

But now… now I’m 34 and I realize how much I took for granted, and how special I felt knowing my most important hats belonged on this fantastic piece of furniture, and that Mom took the time to even dust them sometimes.

I felt valued then, but something about that just came rushing at me 200 miles an hour Saturday night and I felt truly, truly loved by my mother, even though she’s been gone nearly nine years now.

And I cannot tell you what changed in me Saturday night and I suspect that, like all great epiphanies, it’ll muddy up and slip away from me with each passing day, but for a brief time, a couple short hours, I felt like my mother never left at all… and even though the fact that I had the biggest, deepest cry I’ve had in recent years would seem to suggest it was a bad and morose evening, it was anything but.

I slept the sleep of someone who truly has peace, a sleep I’ve seldom ever had, and woke up way too early for a Sunday, but more refreshed than I’ve felt in months, maybe years.

Something weird happened to me Saturday night, something I can’t explain, something that makes me still believe in some kind of life after death and the continued presence of those who are supposed to be long gone. Something I can’t do justice to now, probably never will.

And I don’t understand why, now that I’ve just gotten my period, now that I see the full moon waning, it somehow lessens what I experienced Saturday night, but… somehow it seems to do just that. So I’m fighting that and sharing my strange, poorly conveyed experience in an attempt to further memorialize it, even though I blogged about it on The Ditch on the weekend.

I feel like something ended for me Saturday, something inexplicable I’ve been wanting to have end for a long time. I don’t know what I lost or what I resolved, maybe I’ll never really know. All I do know is I’m grateful I feel this, whatever “this” is.

Man. Life’s weird sometimes. Fitting, what with full moons and all. And, sometimes, some of these inexplicable things maybe shouldn’t be analyzed, but instead should be appreciated for the simple fact that it’s occurred… kind of like loving the moon for no reason other than, well, it’s the moon.

Enjoy your full moons, minions.