‘I see the moon and the moon sees me, God bless the moon and God bless me!’
I don’t remember when this nursery rhyme was first repeated to me but I do remember always repeating it as a little girl and now repeating the same rhyme to my little ones. The ‘Blood Moon’ (such a gory name) was a big occurrence in our house. We live on the water and were watching the tide rise higher than normal. My oldest, Peter, was especially excited. In class they had been discussing the moon, the patterns, the reasons why the eclipse would happen, why the reddish-orange colour and he was thrilled to be able to explain the specifics to us.
Normally we are sticklers for bedtime. It means quiet time for Josh and I, it means kids who are decently rested and up early for school, less arguments in the morning about crawling out of bed and starting the day. Peter started working on us days before, he just wanted us to wake him up to see the moon. Not to stay up the entire time but just to give him a chance to see this phenomena. At 11:30pm Josh went and woke Peter. He came outside to join us and millions of others across North America.
I am pretty sure I enjoyed his sleepy reaction more than the sight in the sky, as his eyes widened in wonder and his breath caught suddenly to see the moon do something a little different that night. He was in awe to realize the next time he would witness a ‘blood moon’ that he would be an adult.
We left our quiet little party in the cool fall air to return to the fire to warm up and then into bed.
What a gorgeous photo of the blood moon. We stayed up to watch it change as well, but where I live it only looked slightly orange and just as it was almost fully changed, the clouds rolled in covering the sky. Glad to see you got a clear night.