The Moon

Jackie pulled her scarf tighter around her. Tonight was colder than usual at 9:00 pm.

As always, on Fridays, Jackie was waiting for the bus from her mother's to her father's house. The ride was short; only 2 stops away, but she knew the Friday schedule and planned for some extra warmth this February. The flimsy bus shelter did nothing to break the cold.

She could see it down the street, at the end of the route, parked there as the driver waited inside to start his shift. Jackie watched the yellow hazards flash, and she willed them to stop. Another gust of wind sent her shivering.

She glanced up at the sky. The clouds were moving with the wind, so fast it looked like the moon was slowly sliding in the opposite direction. It was small tonight. So high that Jackie had to tilt her head way back to see the it well. She could just make out the grey craters behind the wispy clouds that reminded her of the age spots on her late grandfather's face.

Jackie wondered if he, at her age, ever stopped for a moment and just looked at the moon like she was right now. Was it on a cloudy night like tonight? Or a clear summer night when the breeze was warm and the moon was low and large, fully beheld.

She considered how many pretty girls her cheeky Grandpa had kissed in his youth, under the same moon. She could almost see long hair waving and hands locked together.

How strange to think that the moon, Jackie thought, if it were alive, has seen so much time. How many people had lived under it, just like her? How many cold nights and late buses caused people to put their busy lives on hold and remember this huge rock hurtling around them eternally? Jackie had sure never thought of that before.

She thought about people who had lived centuries before her. Rich, poor, British, African, old, young, all gape at the same moon. Kings and slaves alike can feel a sense of awe at how small they really were when they thought about what it meant to live on a planet that has a moon.

Jackie shuffled her feet. The moon didn't have feet, she thought. The moon was stuck, moving in the same circles, around the same blue globe that will neither fully draw it in, nor set it free. It can't change its course and go visit Saturn, or take off with an asteroid to Andromeda. All it could do was fly in circles around the Earth, where billions of people started wars and fell in love and invented machines and wasted time and ate food. How many people had ever lived and struggled and died on this planet?

Had all of them really seen the moon like Jackie could right now?

She looked to the bus. The lights were still flashing.

What did it matter that it was chilly right now when she knew she would be warm soon? Would she remember one chilly night in the vast span of her lifetime? Nothing was permanent, or even really important, then. Not the flashing lights on the bus, not this moment in the cold, not even her own life. Billions of people before her had felt the exact same thing under the exact same moon. She wasn't any more special.

She looked up. The moon was covered with clouds, now. She could barely see the white sphere, but she did notice the cool silver rays softly pouring out from behind the clouds. Funny, she had thought only the Sun did that.

Maybe she should walk. It wasn't such a bad night. Jackie stepped out of the feeble bus shelter, then noticed a movement in the corner of her eye.

Funny how only when she decided to walk did the bus start moving. She looked up. The moon was fully visible now, and Jackie had a moment of clarity.

The moon couldn't change its path. But she could.

The breaks screeched her back to reality and the door opened. Jackie was the only passenger.

"Where to?" asked the driver.

"Mount-Royal Cemetery," she replied. He gave her a curious look, then shrugged. The door closed.

Tonight, Jackie would be paying her grandfather a visit. Because, while the moon spun undetectably around the world and was doomed to hide behind these clouds forever, she could break through her own whenever she wanted.

And the moon would always be there, watching.