Supermoon Birthday

Photo by Ganapathy Kumar on Unsplash

A supermoon--large, full, near the eastern horizon, with a golden, orange glow. The moon was at perigee, the closest point to the earth, and it looked massive and so bright that I thought the Kauffmans had installed a yard light. Of course not. The Kauffmans have no electricity here in Buggy Land, in the middle of the Old Order Amish settlement.

Frost Moon. Beaver Moon. Digging Moon. Deer Rutting Moon. It arrives just about the same time as the first frost. It marks the time when the beavers are preparing their lodges for winter.

And the time when animals are foraging for nuts and digging dens. The time when bucks abandon caution, chasing after and mating with does. The time when your car might collide with that deer on the road, smashing your grill, pitching the wild animal up into the air, only to land on your vehicle, moon cratering your hood.

But I was the only one with a car in the Kauffman’s barnyard. A horse and cart rattled in stuffed with young Amish neighbor women, their bonnets slipped down over their prayer caps. The women had ridden several miles in the dark, their slow-moving vehicle reflector on the back of the cart, their head lamps and a lantern in the front, and the illumination of the moon.

“Hello!” The Kauffmans called, parents and four children pouring out of their side door.

Inside, the house was decorated with a big sparkly blue banner hanging on the wall that read

H-A-P-P-Y B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y!

My childhood birthdays were fun and celebratory. Filled with small gifts, a birthday cake, parties and games of bobbing for apples and pin the tail on the donkey.

This is the day they gave babies away, with every pound of tea, my mother sang every year on my birthday, and we giggled and laughed together. Even as a child, I understood the humor and irony of the dark old folk song.

But as childhood moved into adulthood and my mother’s light passed too soon into the great beyond, birthdays became quieter and more solitary. A nice walk in the woods with my dog was all the celebration I desired. But this year was a milestone birthday, and I was happy to join a family who wanted to celebrate it.

The Kauffman’s dining table was extended, filling the room, with about 15 wooden chairs of various sizes and shapes pushed into place. A veggie train, a coupling of halved green, yellow and red peppers stuffed with carrot and celery sticks, radishes, broccoli, and dip, chugged down the center of the table, its wheels, round slices of the tillage radishes that the Kauffmans grew as cover crops in their garden, tooth-picked in place. The engine was a cucumber with two carrot stumps for smoke stacks with cauliflower florets as puffs of smoke.

We all had healthy servings of the grilled chicken that Martha Yutzy had brought in a Swahn’s insulated cooler that kept the chicken warmer than any device I’d ever experienced. The train disappeared quickly, the children rushing to dismantle the cars, popping the raw vegetables in their mouths. Then came the dessert, a rich chocolate pan cake with white frosting swirling across the top.

“Now let’s sing for Mary,” Elmer said. “What song would you like?”

The guests were surprised I knew the common Amish hymns. But there was nothing I liked more than to hear my neighbors sing. A few years before, when Bertha, the mother and grandmother of this family, had lain dying in her living room, relatives gathered around her bed every night to sing.

A cappella, in four-part harmony, their voices drifted through the window screens and floated toward me across the soybean field on the humid, summer air. I sat in front of my house and listened, every word clear and resonant, carrying the very intent to soothe and console. After several months, I began to recognize the hymns and their cadences. I couldn’t always translate the German, but I became familiar with the words and their accompanying tunes.

At the Kauffman’s home birthday party, the parents, children, and invited guests belted out the hymns, the notes, represented by shapes in their hymnals, strong and bold, but nimble enough to harmonize with the others. I sat back and absorbed it all, singing along when I knew the words. These were the same hymns sung to Bertha, but this rendition was so much more upbeat and joyful.

We cleaned up all the dishes, washing and drying them by hand, plates, glasses, cups and saucers stacked back in the cupboard.

Then I ducked. A tennis ball whizzed over my head. The Kauffman boys had donned their baseball gloves and had taken positions in an imaginary infield in the living room. The ball flew back and forth, back and forth, thumping into the pockets of their gloves. The inning finally over, Menno, the four-year-old, disappeared into the back room.

A few minutes later, Menno returned, waving a yellow flying sky lantern, or a trance balloon. Sky lanterns are paper lights that lie flat in their wrappers, but once you ignite a flame, they billow out and can be launched like hot-air balloons.

We all stepped outside with the lantern, the light of the supermoon bouncing off the metal roof of the goat shed. I’d never seen a sky lantern before. I knew it couldn’t be environmentally correct because it would eventually turn into litter. In another drier landscape, it could even be a fire hazard. But Martha lit the flame, the lantern lifting into the air, and I was immediately entranced.

Up over the goat shed, the lantern glided in the eastern sky, over the pasture that had caught many Kauffman softballs in the pocket of its glove. Up and up and away toward the neighbor’s pond where a few deer were bedding down for the night, drifting from us, smaller and smaller, the flame sparking and beginning to burn up the paper.

“It looks like a star,” I said.

“It’s a star!” The Kauffman boys echoed.

“It’s the Star of Bethlehem!” I said.

“The Star of Bethlehem,” the boys agreed.

Then the lantern seemed to stop, a tiny speck in comparison to the huge round moon that shone brighter and brighter, its golden glow bathing us in light in one of the darkest skies in the state. The lantern hung below the blue sparkle of the Pleiades star cluster, flickering, twinkling, in the constellation of Taurus.

Photo by Arnaud Mariat on Unsplash

I imagined a horse pawing, a beaver digging in, a deer flying through the air just like the lantern. All the folklore, the mythology, the religious imagery and beliefs throughout all the cultures of the world, were present in the night sky, guiding us to the place where we were meant to be.

Quietly at first, then louder and louder, we sang:

Oh, Beautiful Star of Bethlehem
Shining afar through shadows dim,
Giving the light for those who long have gone,
Guiding the wise men on their way
Unto the place where Jesus lay
Oh, Beautiful Star of Bethlehem shine on.

Oh, Beautiful Star of Bethlehem (Star of Bethlehem,)
Shine upon us until the glory dawns.
Give us a light to guide the way
Unto the land of perfect day
Oh, Beautiful Star of Bethlehem, shine on (shine on.)

The Iowa Writers’ Collaborative is hosting its annual holiday party Wednesday, Dec. 17, from 7-10 p.m. at The Harkin Institute, 2800 University Ave., Des Moines, on the campus of Drake University.

Paid subscribers to the newsletters of Collaborative members are invited to attend for free. The cost for non-members is $35 per person.

This is a good opportunity to meet writers from the Collaborative and enjoy some holiday cheer.

You can RSVP here.