When I was a little girl, the Sun seemed to stream into my family’s house from every window, casting wide and asymmetrical squares of light onto the Oriental rug and embracing my little body in warmth and protection. That rug saw a continual parade of action, like my daily dress up parties during which I flip flopped across its surface, decadently dressed to the nines and toting along the family dog on a leash. Or each night’s bountiful dinner, be it between my parents and I, or including the bouquet of boisterous characters I called family.

When those days disappeared, so too did the sunlit squares, replaced instead by rain streaked window panes, slamming screen doors and angry voiced against a background chorus of chirping peepers, singing me to sleep from the woods just outside my bedroom window.

But when I wondered what would protect me, there was always the Moon, the feminine. She who rode alongside me through the darkest of nights when I couldn’t sleep, and through the long car rides home when I leaned my forehead against the cold window of the family car and found her peering over my shoulder, keeping me company as my family tensely traveled through time and the silent spaces of dark winter nights.

Tonight I lay on my back on the same Oriental rug that served as stage for my childhood theatrics. Out the glass doors of my mother’s house I saw the moon. She is there for me now, and in her nurturing, protective gaze, I think I have found the Sun.

Perhaps nothing is ever truly lost so long as you can hold it in eyes of your heart and mind.