Moonlight and time.

My oldest, Joe, went for a sleepover to his Grandmother's house.  Things transpired, as things usually do, and the phone rang at 10pm with a little voice on the other side telling us he wanted to come home.  He had that little tremble in his voice, so we didn't press him much and told him that I'd be there shortly.

The sky was clear, and he was quiet in the back seat until he looked up at the moon.

HIM:  Papa.  Why is the moon so bright?
ME:  (Trying to be as honest as possible, and thinking it would all make sense.) Because the sun is shining on it, man.
HIM:  (Immediately irritated.) No.  The sun is asleep, papa.
ME:  Not on the other side of the world.
HIM:  No.  That's not right.
ME:  (I've given up on giving him any truthful information, and consider my next move.)
HIM:  So?  Why is it so bright?  Really.
ME:  Well.  It's a kind of magic.  (He lets me continue.) The Man in the Moon needs to see what's going on down here, so the magic light shines from his face on nights like this.
HIM:  Whaaaat?  A Man in the Moon?  That's not right, either, papa.
ME:  Yes huh.  Look up there.  Don't you see the eyes and nose and mouth?  And anyway, what if there was no light?  We couldn't see anything at night.  (I look in the mirror and see him smashing his face into the glass to look at the moon.)
HIM:  Hm.  A face.  Okay.

You see it too, don't you?

 

(from L. Frank Baum's "The Woggle-Bug Book" at Gutenberg.org)

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A writer whose work I was quite familiar with died suddenly last week.  During the days that followed many of his peers offered their condolences, and one in particular had an impact.

"We made another of our long-standing pledges to 'get dinner soon,' and of course we never did because we always assumed there'd be more time later. Let that be your takeaway from today, as it is mine: if there's someone you admire or respect, someone whose laugh you'd miss if it were suddenly gone, someone who inspires you, pick up the phone right now and let them know. Don't wait. Time is the enemy of all living things. Use yours well..." 

-Mark Waid, as taken from Comicbookresources.com   

So I wrote a few simple notes this week to people telling them various things I should tell them more often.