If you believe they put a man on the moon...

Today was the 35th anniversary of the moon landing. It's still absolutely surreal to think about, to me.

I wish I could see the moon tonight, but it's hiding. Or it's not around tonight. Or something.

I've been an insomniac for as long as I can remember. As a tiny child, the night-time was my time. I would lay in bed when my sister was asleep and stare at the ceiling, looking for patterns. I'd make up stories to myself where the dolls that hung on my wall as decoration were talking to me and aching to come down so they could play. They were tired of being decorations, and they were lonely for me. I'd whisper soothingly to them that I loved them, and when I was taller, I'd be able to take them down and rescue them.

I found out at about the age of three that if I squinched up my eyes when it was very dark, I could see thousands of tiny coloured dots. These dots were "The Specks" and they were my secret colony. The Specks lived just like ants, only in the air, and only children, mostly girls, and only very magical children, could see them. In my mind I believed that I could telepathically communicate with The Specks. They didn't talk very much, they mostly murmered that I was beautiful and that they loved me. But if I thought shapes at them, they'd swirl into formation like a flock of technicolour birds. I'd amuse myself with this living kalidoscope until I fell asleep. I played with The Specks until I was about ten or eleven years old. I just stopped seeing them, and a part of me wondered if it was true that they only appeared to children. I cried.

Later that year, I remember there was an extremely cold winter - the kind where maple trees become so brittle with frozen sap that a soft shove will shatter a branch into toothpicks, and the snow squeaks under your feet. We were living on the farm - I was going through my first terrifying depression, and didn't know what was happening to me. We were cold all the time, and hungry half the time, and short tempered with each other overtime, all crowded into the one room open-plan downstairs, trying to work endless long division problems in Seton Math, taking turns walking the new baby up and down, up and down, up and down the carpet. He'd wake up and scream if you sat down for a moment. In the daytime everything was weariness and ugliness. Our wood stove belched black soot, sticky with cedar, all over the white snow. Nine pairs of rubber boots tramping up and down the hill to the barn had turned the landscape into slushy dinge. One of my geese lost her feet to frost bite and had to be carried to and from the coop. The trees were snapping and shedding late-dead foliage across our paths, creating sodden, slippery litter. The animals left yellow stains behind them wherever they went.

But I only had to wait until nightfall. There was silence. There were blankets to hide my body from the chill that was always seeking me out. The snow seemed to close itself over the scars of daytime traffic and settle into smoothness. The dark was so dark that the stars seemed aggressive and almost angry, as if they were hurtling their light at the earth to try and make us realize some wisdom we had lost. The bedroom I shared with my sister was on the first floor, and if I lay on my back in bed and tilted my head sharply against the windowpane, I could see the moon over the birches and pines. I still believed in god, and I would lie very still and pray, and find myself crying but not knowing why.

Salve Regina, Mater misericordiae,
Vita dulcedo et spes nostra salve.
Ad te clamamus exsules filii Hevae.
Ad te suspiramus gementes et flentes,
in hac lacrimarum valle.
Eja ergo advocata nostra,
illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte.
Et Jesum benedictum fructum ventris tui
nobis post hoc exsilium ostende.
O clemens, o pia, o dulcis Virgo Maria.

The words sounded like magic to me, chanting felt like magic to me. I'd stretch my nightgown around me like a winding sheet and lie as still as a saint, hearing myself breathe, feeling my breath melt the frost on my windowpane, watching the frost clear away in a perfect circle so that I could see the moon. The purity of it all made me wish I could stop my heart from beating.

One night the beauty was too much for me. My sister was sleeping soundly in the bed next to me, and I eased myself out from under the sheets so as not to let the cold draft in. I paused by the door for my coat and boots, but I couldn't bring myself to put them on. My nightgown was white, and the night was so pure, I felt that to pull on the black boots, two sizes too big to fit all the socks inside, and the seventh hand parka, blue and red and smelling of hay and horses...already I understood the value of costume.

Our front door lead into a screened porch of stained cedar. Birds were forever getting trapped in it. I hated myself for wishing they would, for being glad to see the panicked fluttering, because it meant that I would have a chance to hold a cardinal, or a blue jay, or a chickadee, or a mourning dove in my hands for a few seconds. For a few seconds I would feel myself their heroine, believe for a minute they loved me for it, and let them go. Tonight only my dog was trapped there, and I woke her up to bring her along. I had a great fear of racoons and bobcats and black bears.

I walked out onto the snow. My feet were bare and already twice frostbitten. I thought of the goose with her stumps but relished the thrill of the icy-hot powder clinging to my toes. My brothers and I used to dare each other to stand in the snow barefoot for as long as we could, but that night, I was the only one daring. My dog, sleepy and snuffling and long-suffering, nudged the back of my knees and lumbered off into the woods to pee.

I ran down driveway to the birch tree across the way. Birch trees are too smooth and straight to climb, but my brothers and I, in a mountaineering phase, had taken to throwing a heavy rope over the nearest sturdy branch, tying one end around our waist while pulling on the other, and "reverse rappelling" ourselves to the top.

There was wind that night, and I could feel my skin tightening against it as I worked my way up the tree. I was suffering, and calling it penance, and treasuring every minute. I was climbing a tree to pray for my soul. I was climbing a tree, in my nighgown, in the middle of the night in February, because doing so made me know without a doubt that I had a soul.

Finally I straddled the branch and scooted myself back into the crook of the tree. When you weigh sixty pounds a tree branch will bend, but sway with your weight in the wind. The moon, I knew, was a symbol for Mary. I decided the tree was a symbol for my guardian angel, and laid my head on his breast, and sang the Salve Regina out loud.

"Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy
Hail, our life, our sweetness, and our hope
To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve
To thee do we send up our sighs,
Mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.
Turn then, Most Gracious Advocate,
Thine eyes of mercy towards us.
And after this our exile,
Show onto us the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
O clement, O loving, O sweet virgin Mary."

I knew I was a saint and a mystic and a prophet. I knew that praying half naked at the top of a birch tree, wrapped all in white under the moon, was a baptism that marked me as precious. Who else would think to do such a thing? I was mad with love, before I even understood what it meant, or who I was loving. All I knew was that something called, and I could only answer to the moon.