Stepping outside to find the Moon

...what else co-regulation can look like

Two weeks on the mainland - to hold hands with Mammas as they each navigate their final months earth-side. Stepping outside to find the moon.

Skin like paper, on hands like claws. Hands I’ve known for so very long. Hands that are wandering in the air, describing things I cannot see. Step outside to find the moon.

“It hurts. I know I’m loved, but it still hurts” - the only lucid sentence of the morning. Breathe. Step outside to find the moon.

Pausing to sleep at a dear friends’ house, in-between Mammas. Sweet solace. Step outside to find the moon. The frogs sing and sing and sing.

Eating (lovingly made) childhood dishes with not quite all the essential ingredients inside. Seems she’s slipped beneath the ‘I can still follow the recipe’ line now.

We talk, but it’s kinda the same sentence, just rephrased. Around and around. The brain slowing down, synapses de-coupling. We’re moving into deep time now - the present is unmemorable, and doesn’t really exist. Step outside to find the moon.

And then a last day on Gadigal land, where Newtown still smells just the same as the 90s (yay?) - fig trees, bat shit, spices, car exhaust. But with more gin bars, now. Step outside to find the moon.

Heading home - humbled, tired, awed - with a new stick, and precious memories, and more than a little sand in our shoes. Quiet. Sad. Even though we are loved.

Too tired to make the words right. But it needs to be said - love your peoples, and hold ‘em tight. And the moon. And the moon.