Looking for reindeer...

It was almost a full moon last night, one of those moons that surround themselves with moisture, the type that shimmer in the air - an almost winter’s moon shining through the leaves in my back yard, reminding.

A long time ago, so long ago that it almost isn’t true, I used to open my curtains on winter’s nights and watch the moon as it passed across the sky framed by the big black square of my window. It wasn’t the moon I was interested in, although I’m sure that I sometimes saw the man in it wink at me, I was looking for reindeer. Of course I never saw them, they probably passed after the moon had moved on out of frame or didn’t appear until I’d fallen asleep. But it didn’t stop me looking. Night after night I’d watch, year after year, convinced that one day I would see a reindeer-pulled sleigh pass across the face of the moon.

One time I saw a big old owl flap his way skywards. I’d often see bats flickering this way and that across the moon. I’d trace the moths as the scuttered their way up the glass, out of the top window as they flew towards the light. On windy nights fallen leaves would blow like dark snow across the glowing circle. Sometimes real snow would fall and the moon would be just a glow in the sky, and once – with loud honkings and the whoosh of wings – a ‘V’ of geese, out far too late, passed across the face of Mr Moon.

No reindeer though, no sleigh, and no Santa.

It was years before I found out why.