I See the Moon (Or, Roadtripping with Squiggy)

We were on the road for six days. It was a trip we had planned, postponed, and reworked to the point that it was no longer a vacation as we’d wanted – it became an epic trek that to see as many people we loved as we could.

So while the company was home and heart to Pete and me, we started the trip weary and ended the trip wearier. The kids were ready to go home two days in, especially Squiggy. He’s a little homebody, and a mini-control freak (he takes after his mommy, I am afraid).

But on the first night of our trip, he caught sight of the moon outside his car window.

“Mommy! The moon is following us!”

It was the thing from home that made his life. He watched it as he fell back to sleep.

The next day, he found it again in Virginia.

“Mommy! I see the moon!”

During our Washington D.C. visit on Tuesday, he discovered it again on our way back to Union Station after a Very Long Walk around the Capitol. In spite of his “Home now, Mommy” tired, he was happy.

Then on Wednesday, when we flew out to Connecticut, he lost it behind the clouds.

“Moon gone, Mommy,” he whimpered. We kept assuring him it was there, but he was worried for the next few days when the clouds didn’t lift to reveal his friend.

On Saturday, we flew back to Baltimore and left the D.C. area at 8:30 p.m. We drove through the night to get home. Finally, at 4:30 a.m., we arrived, and I woke Squiggy getting him out of the car.

He looked up, saw the full moon pushing through the surrounding clouds, and said something in his creaky-sweet voice that I will probably remember my whole life: “Mommy, Moon followed us home!”

Of course it did, kid.

I guess home can be anywhere, if the moon follows you there.

FILED UNDER: Instagram, Pip & Squiggy, Snapshot, Squiggy