A Lunar Connection to the Past

I was standing at my kitchen window, looking at the moon.
Missed the eclipse but, for lack of living in Europe, Asia or Australia, that was likely to happen.

I've had a long-standing relationship with the moon, one that was made clear to me when I was a child.
I remember mornings when I would whine to my mother about an unusually rough night of sleep.
"Well," she would say, "that's to be expected. It was a full moon last night."

Apparently, my grandmother, my father's mother, had similar issues with the waxing and waning of the moon.
This somehow made sense to me. Felt special.
Even before, I recalled driving home in my parents' car. Looking out the window, watching the moon follow us home.
Of course, at the time, I wasn't well versed at all about how astronomical guideposts tended to appear fixed in the sky during short periods of time. Didn't matter. I felt as though I was connected to that celestial body.
And now, with this new information, I was reconnected with my grandmother.
She died when I was in the fourth grade, but I still feel connected to her.

I was her favorite, and, let's be honest, it feels wonderful to be on the receiving end of that kind of affection.
She had always had some issues with my mother (go figure, being the mother-in-law) and had, too, trouble with my older brother. But I was the baby, and was so encompassed by her love that I always knew there was a haven of affection in her bedroom.
I would go there, talk to her, weed through her drawers, playing with scarves and costume jewelry.

She was also the first to have me look at the world differently.
I was in her bedroom, sitting with her, the day after a heavy snow.
She pulled up the curtains and shut off the lights.
And suddenly, magically, I was faced with this world I'd never seen.
A world covered in snow that, even though it was night, glowed on the landscape.
I was entranced, looking at the too familiar trees and shrubs now defined only by the snow gently covering them.

I wish I could know her now, now as a fully developed person, with ideas and thoughts, not just the needs of an eight year old.

She was a chemist. Almost unheard of for an eastern European woman in the mid 1900's. A woman who, along with her sisters, helped her family, and, of course, my father, survive the holocaust of World War II, losing her husband and countless others in the process. Changing her name to one that sounded less Jewish to enable said survival. An extraordinary woman.

I wish I could talk to her now, convey to her just how remarkable she was and still is in my memories.

So, on nights like tonight, I look into the sky, see the moon, and think of her.