Catherine Greenfield-- The Full Wolf Moon.

When I was in the fifth grade, my mother introduced me to the Full Wolf Moon. We finally had our necks above the water financially (she had recently been married, and had a second child), and were presented with the luxury of a relatively placid evening. It was winter, and, looking out of our Massachusetts kitchen window, we could see a male otter and a female otter romping through the snow as if it was water. My mother was overtaken with excitement for a moment, and although I did not know why, it was contagious. My sister and my sister's father were both asleep by this point, and the moon was high and white and round as a dinner plate. My mother took my hand and brought me outside-- it was freezing, and we were just in our sweaters.

I remember this in a sequence, as opposed to frame-by-frame; we were running in the snow, we were playing around the otters, I was rolling in the snow, we were hugging the trees, we were watching the tiny fish in the almost-frozen creek, we were crunching in our boots over the frosted stalks of dead wildflowers, she was chasing me with sticks, we were pretending we were the moose that often came down from the mountain right next to our house. And then we were across the street at the school's playground, sliding the slides, howling at the Full Wolf Moon in the dead of winter. We howled, and howled, and howled, as loud and as long and as fully as anything ever howled for any purpose. Neighborhood dogs howled in response. Wolves, or wild dogs, from the mountain howled back. A neighbor cursed loudly and threw something, and still we continued. We couldn't stop. My mother was crying. I was crying, too.

I didn't know why. She did. We were ALIVE. After everything we had been through, everything we had to fight through to be where we were, when we were, TOGETHER... we had made it. And my mother, finally, after so many years of trying to keep the pair of us afloat in a world of scant paychecks and mounting bills, of empty bellies and worn-out shoes, finally got to teach her daughter how to be alive. We found ourselves again, or maybe for the first time, but FOREVER.

I have shown a few other people the aliveness of the Full Wolf Moon, since, but nobody has ever seemed to fully understand it the way my mother has. I was really upset to miss experiencing it, to miss ENCOUNTERING it, with my boyfriend this last winter. I think he would have understood. He's that sort of person. I hope, someday, to show him what it is to become ALIVE the way we, my mother and I, were finally ALIVE. I think he would get a lot out of it. I think everyone would get a lot out of it.

BE ALIVE. LIVE. BE.
Everything's gonna be alright.


(P.S.... the hands in that picture that look manly belong to Frog, the hiker who visited us last class... Frog is the sort of person who knows how to LIVE and BE. If anyone has the chance to talk to him more, he is very interesting, and can also fly; I have seen him at it.)