Date: Thursday, 9/25/69

Harvest Moon time here in Vermont. I miss Mama and Pops and our ritual celebration of that oversized moon. I now have to celebrate the Harvest Moon alone.

There’s no one to make the ritual come alive with me. It’s really just a Morgenstern celebration. Who else would do what we do- parade in circles, watching the moon rise above us, inviting us to fly to it? Of course we always turned down her invitation. But she never revokes it.

I saw the Harvest Moon rise this evening as I walked from Commons after dinner on my way to the library. The people here are too sophisticated to dance with me singing made up songs to the moon. I’d be afraid to invite them to join me.

We Morgensterns are aware of what people think of us. We’re the crazies on the block. In all of Skokie, we were seen as the craziest in the entire suburb.

Pops made the rising of the Harvest Moon a holiday for us because the moon frightened me. There was no way to explain that to our neighbors. Each fall as we made a feast night of it, the looks we got from our neighbors, even the Arthurs, made it clear that our moon worship antagonized them.

Pops soaped the word “awe” that night on our living room window. In large letters he put it out there for people to contemplate, as he put it. He also drew the big moon, in all her redness, on our front window. He didn’t see the difference between Halloween decorations and our hailing of the rising of the Harvest Moon.

I miss our family’s inventiveness. I must remember to carry on that tradition here. In my own way of course and with my own events to celebrate.