About Light, Sort Of

When did the Panther Room become the Diaper Room?
It's been a transition which started when Owen was born and I began to tend to him when his parents were at work. My guest room became the place where I would change his diaper and then in awhile, a Pac-n-Play came to rest there. And as such things happen, toys followed and baby blankets and the stacks of diapers, of course.
The Panther light is still there, right beside the bed in all of its vintage glory, adored as it is with fake hibiscus and the plastic jewel finial on top

and the bed it sits beside is so comfortable and huge that there are nights I sneak out of my own bed when insomnia smacks me wide awake and I snuggle down beneath the covers on it, each and every LED light in the room covered with...a diaper...to cut down on the ambient light which I hate at night so very much. Some of those nights, I turn on the Panther Light and read for awhile until I grow drowsy again and then I reach up and snap it off and fall asleep instantly. It is a tonic, that bed, a place to dream different dreams, more spicy dreams, I have found, with that red lamp shade hovering over in the dark.
Even with the Pac-n-play filled with stuffed animals and baby quilts, even with the two doll beds in the room, even with the wifi router and the printer on a big, wide desk, even with the TV that doesn't work any more, there is something about that room which calls you to lay down and dream. Even with the picture above the Panther Light which has mold growing in it but which I can't bear to throw out because Mr. Moon and I bought it in New Orleans when I was pregnant with Lily but didn't yet know it- a picture of a sleeping babe- even though Owen calls the room "the Diaper Room" and uses the Pac-n-Play for his camping exploits, even though that bed is where Lily and I love to loll about with Gibson, even though that is where Mr. Moon and Owen do their pretend fishing, it is still a fine room for sleeping and I am not ashamed to offer it to guests.

We have company coming tomorrow and so I have been cleaning and tidying a bit and my hands smell of bleach and furniture polish but it's time now to stop and think about supper and I just went outside to put up the chickens and I discovered that the sky was brush-stroked orange and pink to the west and this grin was rising up the pecans.

I remember from a book by Barbara Kingsolver (The Lacuna) that when the curve of the moon faces out like a "D" which stands for Dios, it is a waxing moon and when it faces back, like a "C" for Christo, who was killed, it is a waning moon. Thus I know that this grin will grow and the night after tomorrow's night, I will be on Dog Island and if it is clear enough, I shall see it growing fuller from grin to belly and the Panther Room/Diaper Room will be here waiting for guests and insomniacs and for babies and boys.

Tomorrow I'll cut camellias to put in that room for the guests and on Dog Island, there will be nothing but the wind-scoured island shack and the sound of that wind ripping through the dunes and wailing like a ghost and lingering in the needles of the pine trees where it sings a rusty rustling song and you can hear the surf if it is high from across the slender island all the way to the bay where we will be and that belly-moon will rise up and it's all about light, somehow, some way and we capture it in flames and in bulbs, we let it in and we give it out and none of this may seem connected but trust me baby, it sure is.