That’s what my 5 year-old son said today when we were playing outside, in February, on the grass. He looked up to the sky, and there right by our favorite mountain he saw the moon. He had never realized the moon could come out in the daytime too.
I guess that’s how life is too. You experience the beautiful radiance of the sunshine on a cold winter day, but sometimes you see the moon peeking at you, like a reminder of night. These last few weeks I have been blessed more than I can express. Or maybe it’s not really that I’m receiving more blessings, but that I notice them more because of the sadness that I see around me.
On a Saturday afternoon I was watching my kids play in the exuberant way happy children do. I made the mistake of checking Facebook on my phone, and I found out a dear friend’s son died while serving an LDS mission in Romania.
How can feelings fluctuate in a heartbeat and reveal the beauty and wonder of life that were buried underneath petty things like stressing out about a clean house, not being able to sleep in, or the neighbor’s barking dog?
I look at my children now, and I think of that wonderful young man, who is so loved by all who knew him. My heart clenches when I notice how hard my kids try please me, how they compete to make me smile, how tender their voices sound when they say they love me.
On Valentine’s day I had the blessing of seeing a friend of mine whom I’ve known for years. She is going through a very hard time in her life–single mother after a painful divorce. That reminder of night made my day brighter. But I’m sad that sometimes I have to see others suffer to make me aware of the frailty of life, of how a sunny day can be turned into a blizzard.
On parent-teacher conference my son’s teacher showed me the poem my Gorgeous Boy wrote. The assignment was “The Five Senses of Love,” and though I don’t remember the whole thing (mostly because I was trying not to cry in front of the teacher), there are three lines that are imprinted on my mind:
Love smells like blueberry muffins fresh out of the oven.
Love looks like a clean house when I come home from school.
Love smells like the honey in hand lotion.
While I was reading it, I thought, “Wait a second. I make blueberry muffins every week, and… and…my hand lotion is honey scented, and…yeah, the clean house obsession.”
I’m moved beyond words that my son can feel my love for him in the things I do for him. That was the best Valentine’s Day present I have ever received. Though, Jeff, you can still write that letter I’ve asked you for a thousand times. You know, a la Jane Austen hero’s.

So friends who still visit my blog, now you know why I haven’t posted at all. It’s been a time of reflection here at my house. A time for counting blessings and for praying. And seeing the beauty of moonlight in the night.