INCONSTANT MOON

If they say the moon is blue,

We must believe that it is true.

 Old English Proverb    

                                                                                           

    “It was different in my day.  Kids respected their parents," Mom said. "My mother and father were wonderful.” 

   Her father was a drunk and a pedophile.

   By the time Mom turned five her mother was in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down. It happened on the night of a blue moon. No medical opinion rendered, the family suspected witchcraft.

   “My father worked hard and he took care of mother. He only drank for birthdays and religious holidays,” Mom said in his defense. 

    Then I must have a photographic memory for those holy Hallmark days of Grandpa lit up, his eyes and lips shiny, unzipping his pants and grabbing little hands to rest on the hard surprise there. We never told. The aunts and uncles paid no attention to the kids hanging around jolly old Granddad.

    “It only happened once,” Mom says when I remind her that he molested her, too.  “And my mother chased him with a frying pan.”  

    That’s her story and she’s sticking with it. That was the night of the blue moon and her mother never walked again. No more chases with the frying pan: truth waned with the moon.     
      

    “We were happy then,” Mom says.  “Life was simple.” 

    She smiles at her happy-ever-after ending to the story of her life. She’s 83. I still have a life to live, a ways to go, the irresistible pull of the blue moon to fight.

Published in 2007 in Storycircle