Hello Moon
Nature can create great loss, but it is also the antidote to my loss. A safe place to grieve and a medicine called awe.
She sat on a rocky outcropping overlooking Richardson Bay. Below, Western Sandpipers searched the shallow waterside for crustaceans. Harbor seals on abandoned Sausalito houseboat docks barked at seaplanes disturbing their rest. Standing tall, the Marin Headlands and Mount Tamalpais formed a dark green barrier between her and the Pacific Ocean, colored by trees as old as 800 years and filling the air with a mossy musk.
When I toured her on a crystal-clear day in 2015, she was dressed in a fresh coat of bluish-gray paint that complemented the sky. With more frameless windows than I could count, she welcomed the outdoors indoors. She was full of life. So we purchased the house as a place to build our family.
In the 360-degree view playroom, my baby did tummy time while I watched Karl the Fog, like clockwork, avalanche over the mountains and cover us in a cozy blanket, before giving way to a moonlit dusk. I felt safe in our nest upon a rock.
In 2016, California’s five-year drought ended suddenly. Howling 100 mph wind gusts thrust rain horizontally. Floor planks rippled, the way piano keys move under a sliding finger. Branches clubbed our exterior. With it, my sense of safety blew away.
My husband diagnosed my vigilance and all-season beanie wearing as being thin-blooded, a symptom of my former life in Southern California. But my motherly instinct sent me peering through the glass nightly. I watched the silver moonglade on the choppy bay. I observed the lunar orb shrink to an eerie, orange dot during NorCal fires. I measured its illumination, hoping for respite from precipitation.
After a sleepless, stormy night in May 2019, she succumbed. Water poured onto our house’s head, traveling with gravity over her shoulders and down her arms. Every wall of the flat double-mansard-roof structure was soaked, according to the insurance company that locked our belongings in storage and stripped our house to the studs over a year.
Before selling our plot unbuilt, we bounced between hotels and short-term rentals for so long that our 3.5-year-old asked, “What’s home?”
We began to focus on the constants, regardless of where we rested our heads. Fleur and I searched for Earth’s natural satellite: beyond the bougainvilleas of Benedict Canyon, past the eucalyptus trees of Cavallo Point, above the redwoods of Lagunitas Road, and now, between the coastal live oaks of our home in Montecito.
“Hello, moon!”