{"id":1214,"date":"2016-05-23T07:22:07","date_gmt":"2016-05-23T11:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/?p=1214"},"modified":"2016-05-23T09:01:32","modified_gmt":"2016-05-23T13:01:32","slug":"moon-watching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/moon-watching\/","title":{"rendered":"Moon Watching"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-1215 size-large\" title=\"Moon Watching\" src=\"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/FullFlowerMoonPost-663x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops a full moon with flowers to celebrate the Full Flower Moon and Mother's Moon and Mars at opposition.\" width=\"625\" height=\"965\" srcset=\"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/FullFlowerMoonPost-663x1024.jpg 663w, https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/FullFlowerMoonPost-194x300.jpg 194w, https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/FullFlowerMoonPost-768x1187.jpg 768w, https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/FullFlowerMoonPost-624x964.jpg 624w, https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/FullFlowerMoonPost.jpg 1036w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 625px) 100vw, 625px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Bright light poured into the bedroom when I awoke in my mother\u2019s house in the middle of the night. Street-lamps. Their white radiance puddled on car tops and on the newly paved street. I tiptoed from window to window, peeking beyond the glowing. The sky was a thick mass of clouds, as it had been most of the day.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wish we could see the moon, we\u2019re missing the moon,\u201d I\u2019d announced before bedtime.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMay\u2019s Full Moon was called the Full Flower Moon as well as Mother\u2019s Moon,\u201d according to The Old Farmer\u2019s Almanac. They\u2019d promised a Full Flower Moon for Saturday night. A Mother\u2019s Moon. How perfect that I was visiting my mother. Waiting for weeks in anticipation, I\u2019d known it wouldn\u2019t look any different from other moons. Farmer\u2019s Almanac uses colorful Colonial and Native American names to track the moons in changing seasons. May marks a time of warming, blooming, increasing fertility. Bare trees were finally budding. Wild violets and fresh white trilliums dotted the slopes off woodland trails. The gray winter was really over.<\/p>\n<p>For me, any light in May, even a street-lamp, is something to celebrate.<\/p>\n<p>A Flower Moon. It was also a Blue Moon, the third full moon in a season of four full moons. And Mars was at its brightest and closest point to Earth in more than a decade. But Saturday night there was not even a hint of Mars, or the moon, in that dark sky.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes it\u2019s the hardest thing to have faith that there will be light, that summer will come again, that there will ever be another beautiful bright time. But then, there are things that leave no doubts in my mind: I can\u2019t always see the moon, but it is out there, somewhere. I can\u2019t see my daughter who died, but I believe she is out there. Somewhere. Watching the moon. Watching me.<\/p>\n<p>And somehow, through long winters and many moonless nights, a small light inside me stays aglow with hope.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>What does a full moon mean to you?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bright light poured into the bedroom when I awoke in my mother&rsquo;s house in the middle of the night. Street-lamps. Their white radiance puddled on car tops and on the newly paved street. I tiptoed from window to window, peeking beyond the glowing. The sky was a thick mass of clouds, as it had been [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[702],"tags":[843,224,845,842,841,247,393,844,840],"class_list":["post-1214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-702","tag-celebrating-light","tag-depression","tag-faith","tag-farmers-almanac","tag-full-moon-means","tag-grief","tag-hope","tag-mars","tag-watching-the-moon"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}