From my journal of our trip to Germany.. midnight German time, 6:00pm Eastern, 5:00pm Central, 3:00pm Pacific.

I left the shop at midnight having done quite a bit of email with those winding down their day of work back home. I was just ending my evening, tired and ready for bed. They were just beginning theirs.

There was no moon tonight, except for the yellow plastic crescent moon that painted a glow of the same color in the courtyard. Though it was not the real moon, it was big like the moon in the sky, because it was so close...so close you can touch it, if you had a ladder anyways. Peter Kruger built the moon so that he would always have the moon at hand. I so very much like that concept. It hangs in the courtyard of Handarbeitshaus, the German Quilt Shop and Museum where my daughter, Emilynn and I are staying. We stay in the main house, adjacent to the quilt shop and guest houses for retreaters.

I remember watching the men walk on the moon. I was with my grandma and we were both in awe, as the moon glowed outside and the black and white tv showed us replay after replay of Neil Armstrong and those first steps of man on the moon. We were mesmerized and watched late into the night. The moon has always held a special fascination for me. Not in the scientific sense, although I enjoyed the elementary school science projects in which the moon was acted out by a ping pong ball, the earth a basketball, and the sun a flashlight. You could see why the earth gets dark at night and why you see the moon "rise" and set with the sun's own habits. But that all aside, it was the man in the moon that fascinated me and the amount of light that it could shed on the house I grew up in, the shadows that were cast across the yard from this object so far away. I used to be in awe of the moon following us home after a trip. How could it do that? I used to love that it would do a slow dance across the sky every night, always surprising me where it would end up, though as I grew older, I realized that it always danced the same dance. A dance from one side to the other, consistent in it's course...like a good mariner steering through the seas from one shore to another, from sunset to sunrise. I would wish upon that moon, yes, the moon, not a star, but the moon. I thought the wishes would have more hope of coming true, for the moon was brighter, and bigger according to what I understood. Moon wishes.

At home in Minnesota just two nights ago, I watched the moon send its shadows through the windows of the house, patterning the grids on the floor, adding character to the old frame of the home. But tonight in Germany the moon hides from us, it's plastic replacement whimsically shining, full and ever so bright as if to give a nod and a wink to its hiding idol. Standing guard over Groebern, Germany the plastic moon takes over the job of the moon in the sky. I look up at it and I still have moon wishes. Yet so many years from long ago, and so many more miles away, I realize that my wishes have not changed so much. I turn to take in the scenery of this very different place.

The "pupe", scarecrow doll, cast long ghostlike shadows over the cobblestone path directing my gaze along the path and up the grapevines that grow alongside the stucco of the shop, or "laden". The grapevines produce the juiciest grapes, I have picked three or four on every trip from the "haus" to the "laden". The juice spills out of the grape as it is plucked and squeezed ever so slightly, as if it had been held in a pitcher and poured. Over the grapevines, the slate roof glowed from the light in the courtyard and my gaze continued upward to a light feast for my eyes. The stars shown brightly as if trying to make up for lack of the moon, the real moon that is. Like miniature candles flickering in the sky, set against a deep blue background, "hintergrund". I turned in circles slowly trying to take it all in, but it draped me like a quilt and I could not see it all at once, it went on and on beyond what my eyes and mind could physically comprehend. And in the middle of the courtyard, in the middle of the sea of this fascinating experience, this mariner cast her own shadow from the light of the plastic moon turning around and around slowly... trying to think of a way to save the flavor of the moment.

For my loved ones back home across the waters....a kiss across the moon for you or rather the stars tonight. It will hop from star to star and fall gently on your cheek as a drop of rain, or dance around you as the touch of the wind as you end your day so many miles away.

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