Crazy As The Moon

I stand on my porch looking at the full moon, lua cheia.  There is a ring around the moon, a Moon Dog, signifying that rain will arrive within the next three days.  My daughter’s young friend, Lorenzo, told us this.   He preferred to be called Lawrence, attempting to change his identity at an early age, something I thought would be an on-going and long quest for this little guy.  A very bright and somewhat unusual kid, not popular with his peers, and, if I was correct about the vibes in his house, not with his family either.  But I liked him.  I thought he was a neat.

I stared at the moon, from my porch in Mozambique, remembering this little kid, now a man somewhere out in the world. Was Lawrence looking at this same moon, planning for rain?  Did a ring around the moon even mean the same thing in the southern hemisphere as it did in New Mexico? Lawrence would know, I bet.

Do Mozambicans look at the moon and wonder about life up there?  Do they know people back home think that life here is just about as strange as the life they imagine way up there?  I didn’t know the answer to any of these questions but continued to keep my focus skyward.  I moved my plastic chair outside from the living room and settled in.  I had no idea what, if any, answers might come, and probably more questions would pile up.  But there wasn’t anywhere else I wanted to be at the moment.