Summer Hiroshima Moon
The Hiroshima moon rose in sickle form over the front range, its young light just above a bank of storm clouds.
Left Jon and Jen’s tonight around 9 pm. Ruth came up and grabbed my legs, put her head against my waist. She didn’t say anything. I hugged her, told her I loved her and left.
Though children are never as innocent as we credit them, they are often transparent in their feelings, which appears as innocence. Perhaps it is innocence, to be out there in the world as you are, with no guard up.
We may mature as we age, but to the extent that we become opaque to the world, we will never again know innocence.
Innocence is the rising of the young moon, slender and beautiful, perhaps aging can be the waning of the same moon, a sickle slender and beautiful.
Grandchildren touch the heart in a way no other relationship can. Ruth and Gabe occupy that part leaning toward the future; the part of the heart that will not die, but will live on in the lives of others. In a profound sense we need our grandchildren far more than they need us.
Without them most lives hit a barrier as bleak as the dark of the moon, extinction. With them the heart never stops beating, it transfers bodies, ready for another lifetime.