Harvest Moon

Here's an example of one of my full moon essays from the collection my writing quartet is pulling together and will publish the end of July. We wrote one for each month of the year.

Harvest Moon of October
On a beautiful, crisp October evening I pulled on a red sweatshirt and headed to the stadium. Dodging excited teenagers, perky cheerleaders and well-armed trombone players, I made my way to our reserved seats right on the 50-yard line. I settled in and got my bearings by taking attendance: husband on sidelines with camera – check! No. 1 son milling around with the rest of the football team – check! No. 2 son and daughter ensconced with friends and ignoring the fact I exist – check! check!

I sat back to relax and saw a bright orange Harvest moon hung low in the sky behind the visitor’s stands. I knew this would be a magical night. Going to a football game at Lakeshore is an event full of band music, cheerleaders, pompon girls, boys with bodies painted red who run up and down the sidelines carrying huge flags and fireworks whenever the home team scores.

But all of that pales in comparison to how I feel when I watch my children play sports. All three of them played a variety of things when they were growing up, but by the time they got to varsity level in high school, they each settled on one sport to concentrate on - our oldest son played football, our second son played soccer and our daughter played tennis. All of them were very good at their sport, but none of them were superstars, for which I am very thankful.

Until I had children I never knew how proud of another person I could be. I was happier and more excited about their achievements than anything I could ever manage to do myself. I would sit and watch them on the field, the pitch, the court, and I would try to contain myself; after all, modesty is a much-valued Midwestern trait. But inside I was bursting with a mix of anxiety and pride and I watched their every move like a stalker.

I didn’t really care if they won or lost – although truth be told, winning was so much more fun for all of us. What I loved was to see them practice those values that seem so out-of-fashion these days: good sportsmanship, trying their hardest, supporting their teammates, grace under pressure. All of them managed to do this throughout their years of playing sports and I think that’s a fine base on which to build the rest of their lives.

That night I sat in my stadium seat watching my first born and felt both happy and sad while the frantic activity swirled all around me. I couldn’t imagine it would get better than this and I didn’t want this time to end. But the truth was, we would have many more of these times in the coming years as our children grew up – month after month, year after year, doing us proud under the Harvest Moon.

Denise Kalin Tackett, October, 2009