Full Moon 12/6/14

Last night we met our friends Kelly and Maureen at a great restaurant in Occidental, a tiny picturesque townie the hills northwest of Sebastopol. We all straggled in, anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour late, through bad Friday night traffic, bad roads and rain, but the restaurant staff was unruffled and managed to get us all served with a much needed drink and fed in time to get to a 7:30 performance by Lucy Kaplansky.

During the intermission, OilMan went outside to the restroom, and came back to report that it was pouring with rain which was running down the tiny main street of town in a river. We reluctantly decided that we should set out on the drive home immediately as the West County roads are in notoriously bad condition and subject to flooding.

It was a white knuckle drive over pitch dark winding mountain roads awash with water in the pouring rain. At one point, we rounded a corner to see emerging from the rain to see a 15 foot tall, fully lighted Christmas tree before us…a magical sight indeed!

Today my neighbor Cindy and I went to the "local" shopping center an hour away in another county for some Christmas shopping. I can't think of anyone I would rather do this with, but I still think that lighted tree emerging from the darkness did far more to get me in the spirit of Christmas than the crowded parking lots and jostling crowds in the shopping center, despite the holiday decorations and Christmas music in all the stores.

The skies cleared briefly today and I went out to look at the full moon rising above the rooftop in its halo of mist. I always love the thought that wherever we are in this world, we are all looking at the same moon….