Royal Wood and the Full Moon

It's been an extraordinary week. The stars definitely feel like they are aligning somewhat. I hope this bodes well for the sale of my farmhouse.

Tuesday evening, I took myself out on a date. No, it wasn't a date with anyone else. Just a date with myself. For myself. My Sonshine has been becoming so much more mobile and active and all of my energy is devoted to him 24/7. My sister offered to babysit and I attended a concert at the local concert hall in town: David Gray, all the way from England. The guy who opened was Royal Wood.

What's not to like about a guy named 'Royal Wood'?

I first met Royal three years ago when I was lucky to catch him and Emm Gryner play a benefit concert for R.O.O.F. in the main floor of Pazzo, a cozy restaurant in Stratford, Ontario. That night, a winter blizzard swept in and my yoga instructor, who lived in Stratford at the time, invited me to the concert. I had just split up from my common-law husband of 9 years and he and I were still co-habitating for a time before he could move out and I could move on. Those couple of months felt awkward and so I made myself as scarce as I could during those days and got myself out of the house. Blizzard or no blizzard!

Now, this past Tuesday, Royal opened for David Gray, but truth be told, I secretly wished it had been the other way around. I came to adore David Gray years ago by falling too hard for his album, Lost Songs, but the bulk of what he played on Tuesday night sounded so Pop-Tunish, I felt all hoodwinked and disappointed. Royal only sang maybe 5 or 6 songs, but I could have listened to him all night. He was charming, self-deprecating, folksy and he has this warm, melodic, old-world quality to his voice. It's a voice from another age, another time. With witty and winsome lyrics to boot! Plus, he's a pretty damned dapper dresser in his buttoned vest and matching suit pants. The whole package goes down smooth as a tumbler of peaty Laphroaig. I could have nursed that particular drink all evening. Yum, yum!

Instead, I barely made it through the Gray portion of the night and chose to leave early. He just was no longer my thing.

Tonight a full moon has risen. And I own a new home. Well. 'Kay. Conditionally, I own it. I found a home this morning in the town I want to move to and placed an offer to purchase that home by the afternoon. I learned about two hours ago that my offer was accepted. Of course, it's conditional on the sale of my current home. But it's one step closer to everything clicking into place. I have six weeks to sell my current home and hope to move by August. Just in time to watch the Perseids shoot across the sky from a new backyard. May have to get out of town, though, to celebrate them properly. Maybe I'll come back to the conservation area near where I have lived the last 10 years to toast this year's meteor shower. Sounds like a plan.

Tonight, I feel wistful. I cried when I learned the news. I cried for this home, the one I'm leaving. I cried with relief because I know if it all works out, I will feel happy in this new home I'm buying. Life feels really good tonight. Summer is approaching.

Full moon on the rise...

And just to top it all off, a huge silver disk rises in my rural sky, just over my 162-year old apple tree. A part of me feels I am waxing towards "full" myself. Coming full circle. Towards some wholeness. Some greater sense of completion. An even brighter future. It sheds a soft light, like lunar silver on lake water. Like we are sailing towards our own Sea of Tranquility. He fell asleep in my arms while I was on the phone when my agent broke the good news. When I walked him through the home today, he laughed and giggled. I think he could feel the spirit of this new home is a happy one. The street is tree-lined. The street is ride-your-first-bicycle-ride safe. There were buggies on other driveways. It's walkable to my work. It will be walkable to his school. It will be walkable to his daycare if a spot opens for him.

The stars are aligning...

I step outside and breathe in the scent of ploughed manure. A bat darts near the tops of my pines out back. Goosebumps rise on my arms, from the cool breeze approaching over the fields, from the feeling that my days out here are dying now. My heart weeps and sighs. And winks at me. That wink feels familiar. Maybe that's where the goosebumps come from. I look up at dat ol' moon. She's so bright tonight. A waxing moon is good luck. Tomorrow she begins to wane. I make a wish that everything will align by the next time she begins to wax.

Life is good. I feel so blessed.

And blissful...

Music: Royal Wood: Thinkin' About

Blue Moon

Tonight is the final day of the best year I've experienced in my life thus far. I thought 2008 was pretty great. I'd spent some of it loving a (new) special someone. I spent the last part of it planning for my own special someone and realizing that dream via In Vitro Fertilization surgery. The fact that the surgery was successful on its first attempt was mindblowing and 2008 ended feeling the kick of a baby inside me that December for the very first time in my life (fourth pregnancy, first kick).

2009. Now there's a year that will be tough to beat. Hard to imagine topping the joy of experiencing the burgeoning of an unexpected (though hoped for) pregnancy and the elation of pushing your first child between your legs out into the world after you believed for more than a decade that you were infertile...2009 was one damned good year.

But that doesn't mean I'm not optimistic. I think 2010 promises a plethora of wonder and laughter and joy yet to come in my life thanks to my beautiful, blossoming son.

He's asleep right now in his crib, arms curled around the little, white, fluffy bunny one of his aunts gave him. There is a roaring fire in the woodstove and I'm getting ready to open a tiny bottle of bubbly and drop a couple of blackberries into the glass. At around 11:45 p.m., I will lift him silently out of his crib and try to keep him asleep while I dress him in his snowsuit. Then I'm going to wrap us both up and take him out onto the back deck for when midnight strikes so we can keep the pines company and get a clear glimpse of the moon.

See, tonight, on this very special New Year's Eve, a blue moon will be shining brightly, illluminating the start of 2010. And you know what they say about blue moons. They only come around once in a...well, you know. A blue moon happens when there are two full moons in one calendar month. But it's pretty rare for them to happen on New Year's Eve. That's about once in a generation.

The last time there was a blue moon on a New Year's Eve, I was 23 years old, just about to turn 24. Another decade had begun. It was December of 1990. The following year would be pretty damn special itself:  the summer of '91, I get lost on my own in the fog for hours on the Southwest coast of Ireland and this mystical experience affects me greatly; my outlook, my spirit, my future. That same summer, I head to England to study Yeats and Other Irish Poets as well as Modern British Drama at Cambridge University towards my English degree back home. It's the last time I see my Aunt Rita alive and spend time with her. That autumn, I finally begin the degree I truly want to pursue (Drama) and as winter nears, I meet my first love. Like I say, 1991 held some extraordinarily special moments. I was still so young, still figuring out my life the last time a blue moon happened on New Year's Eve. I still had my whole life ahead of me, so to speak.

I'm hoping I still have a good chunk of life ahead of me now. Haven't figured it out yet, but I'm winging it as I go and enjoying myself. And tonight feels extra special.

We're having a quiet New Year's, my son and I. I just wanted to share it alone with him. In this old farmhouse that I'll be sad to leave but must come spring.

Ending my marriage almost 3 years ago was the first of several monumental changes that have happened since in my life; becoming a mother not being the least, but the greatest, in every respect.

The next time a blue moon occurs on New Year's Eve, it will be 2028. My son will be 19 years old. I doubt he'll be spending that particular New Year's with me, but I know what I'll be doing. I'll be remembering tonight, the last time there was a blue moon, a second full moon, in the calendar month of December. The night of our first New Year's together. The night I held him as ma wee 7 1/2 month old laddie in my arms. The night I bundled him up against the cold and the snow and we strolled outside to gaze up at the rural sky above the farmhouse that was his first home (and mine).

And I'll be happy to remind him that the exuberant brightness of the full moon that night was still dull in comparison to the sonshine that he is, lighting up my arms and my heart and my soul and my life the way he has and, I'm sure, will continue to for many years to come. Yes, I think 2010 promises to be one amazing year! Though, with all the candles I have lit in this farmhouse, 2010 may never hold a candle to how wondrous 2009 was for me. Still, it may yet prove me wrong. ;)

At least this New Year's Eve, I can smile and truthfully sing,
Blue Moon, now I'm no longer alone...
without a dream in my heart,
without a love of my own...

Happy New Year, everyone!

All the best of health and happiness to you and yours in 2010...

Maternity Photography: Mattitude Photography
Music: Blue Moon, Ella Fitzgerald