After reading the kids a bedtime story with Jeanette, I got on my gym clothes, hopped on my bike, and headed over to the exercise room in the Shadowglen Amenities Center. It’s an okay little facility – two treadmills, a couple of ellipticals, a bike, and several resistance machines, along with a full set of dumbbells and a bench and several medicine balls of various weights. There’s enough to cover most of the parts of the body you’re aiming to work on, during an average workout. So it’s pretty good, if a little small for a subdivision of Shadowglen’s size. It’s a lucky thing my neighbors are so sedentary; otherwise, I’d be waiting for my elliptical machine every night.
But last night was less about my workout than the ride over there – the journey, rather than the destination, as they say. It was an absolutely gorgeous evening, the kind that makes you wonder why they all can’t match it. The heat of the day was gone, except for a slight layer of jasmine-scented warmth that kept the gentle breezes from being cold. Stars were blinking brightly.
And that moon.
It wasn’t full – maybe at about half – but the evening was so clear that the half-moon lit the way before me as I left the house. I decided I’d take the long way to my destination, and the Volkswagen Cabrio commercial that introduced me to Nick Drake’s music about ten years ago ran through my head. I thought also of the Cat Stevens song “Moonhshadow” and, of course, Van Morrison’s “Moondance.”
But I didn’t just recall songs; I remembered moonlit moments from my own life. That first kiss I’ve already described in detail happened in moonlight. A night during my freshman year at Syracuse did too, when I climbed the “Thousand Steps” and made out in the moonlight until we sat up to watch the sunrise. Her name was Michelle, and I still wonder about her from time to time.
There was the night my best friend Miki and I, along with my brother and a friend of his, got a bonfire going on the beach in Montauk.
More recently, Jeanette and I took a trip to Anguilla in the British Virgin Islands back in February 2004, between the births of our two boys. Such an idyllic place, and so wonderful to get away with the one I love. I’ll never forget how exquisite she looked one night, standing on the beach singing Bob Marley songs under a bright, Caribbean moon.
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