Last night was supposed to be a special night. The moon was supposed to be the largest it has ever been for decades. Our friends had booked romantic dinners with their partners at various beachside locales, poised to be in the right place to get the best view of the Supermoon.
My sixteen-year-old daughter G wasn't particularly fussed about the Supermoon. She was more concerned about the piles of homework yet to be done for the next day. But her father insisted that she walked up a little hill with us to look at the Supermoon. She protested whilst he insisted. "Homework is just homework, whereas you will remember this moment forever," he had told her. "Something that you can tell my grandchildren about, you seeing the Supermoon with your parents on Andaman Hill in Phuket when you were sixteen."
After some screeching on her part, she reluctantly came outdoors with us. The moon was tiny! And it was clouded over! I waited for her to jeer at her father, but instead, she said kindly, "I bet it was larger earlier on, Daaad. Remember the huge one we saw in Devon last summer whilst we were camping? Do you remember? We have seen some amazing ones, haven't we, Daaad?"
At that moment, I thought she was the most magical child, the way she could transform herself instantaneously from a grumpy teen to a human being wise beyond her years, who has the capability of creating enchantment for her father with her words. For her words had taken him someplace special, to a place where the moon was huge and luminous and studded with love.
And so, we stood there on this magical night, just three of us, chatting about basketball, school, the weekend, standing in the glow of a very small, weak moon. But for us, it was magic all the same, if not more. Magic and Supermoon exist every night, if you have the eyes to see them. It is indeed a postulate of physics that things come into being only when we are here to witness their existence.
As for the three of us, we will certainly remember this November night in the year G was sixteen, standing on Andaman Hill, watching our Supermoon. The moon was shining magnificently in us that night
First published in www.raisinghappystrongkids.com