When the sun descends below the horizon and the trees outside my window begin to fade into dark, my room is dimly lit by distant city lights and the pale moonshine, permeating the settling shadows. My plants rest unmoving on the windowsill. Readings for class remain untouched on my desk. In the twilight, the world is quiet. In my bedroom, the world is still.
Such a scene harkens back to the vividly coloured pages of the childhood classic Goodnight Moon. At night, I am once more a child, finding comfort and imagination in the minutiae, listening to the lull of a world in repose. Goodnight Moon was written and illustrated by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd respectively. Published in 1947, Goodnight Moon has since cemented its timeless status. As a little four year old first listening to my mother read, Goodnight Moon was a lullaby, its simple rhyme a gentle cadence.
Though I had been unaware of such at the time, the many bedtimes spent reading Goodnight Moon imparted lessons and values that followed me throughout the years. Goodnight Moon, to me, for all its simple rhyme and seeming juvenility, represented the art of notice. The picture book details a bunny’s nightly routine of bidding whatever he sees a goodnight, ranging from the stars and the air to a comb and a mouse. The bunny noticed all with attention and care, seeing value, finding comfort, and observing wonder in the most ordinary of objects. Nothing, from the moon to a bowl of mush, was spared of love.
This I seek to emulate in my daily life – to notice, to care and to love that which surrounds me, from the tremendous to the ordinary. So at night, when the world falls quiet, I notice the drape of my window curtains, the bristling trees outside, my half-full bedside bowl of candy, and the photos on my wall of those I hold dear, and I see wonder.
“moon” by fsse8info is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
