Phases of the Moon

By Patricia Helisek

It took a sixty-five year old woman from Michigan to discover who she really is when she comes to terms with memories and secrets of her life. Phases of the Moon is a unique narrative of selected milestones in a Michigan womans life. The telling is subtle but intriguing and sometimes quirky. You will get to know Pat through her very short stories that uncover the forces that molded her personality. You will read what was and is important to her as she plods through life. Although she has not experienced a soap opera existence, you will definitely relate and enjoy what she went through as a young girl and as a mature woman. Pat hopes to share her stories and to inspire the young adults of the present and the baby boomers of her time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465387127

Patricia Helisek

Pat is a graduate of St. Pius High Catholic School and had a strict Catholic upbringing. She attended Wayne State University in Detroit, then Eastern State University and Western University in, Michigan. All studies were geared to a career in education. She taught special needs children for 37 years. Originally from Detroit she and her husband moved to Coldwater Lake outside Coldwater, Michigan soon after they married to accept jobs in that community. After about thirty years Pat moved again with her husband to a thirty-four acre farm in Reading, Michigan. Presently she and her husband hope to scrape together enough money to escape the brutal Michigan winters and head for some sunny clime.

Book preview

Phases of the Moon

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W hen was the last time you stood on your porch, laid on the lawn of your backyard, drifted on a body of water in a small boat, or stood at the edge of a corn field to gaze at the moon? Can you remember how you felt when you came face to face with that suspended silvery circle of porcelain? Did you feel sentimental? Romantic? Lonely? Perhaps you even shared an ancient primal response of wonder once felt by a lone Neanderthal when he stared at the moon. Well, I have some impressions about the moon and its marvelous phases. To me the moon’s phases are symbolic messages for the blue planet. The new moon is a good place to start to explain my meaning.

The new moon is so fragile looking. The small crescent looks like it will fall off the edge of the moon itself. There is so much promise with the new moon since it will grow to the full moon in a month. My grandchildren are like the new moon clinging to so much promise. But sometimes, my grand-daughter wears the crescent moon as a tiara for her hair and my grand-son uses it as a boomerang.

You can’t get much light out of a quarter moon. It just hangs there in the sky. People try to engage it but earthly observers just wait in anticipation of the quarter moon. I know people who are just like that quarter moon. They can only give so much and no more. We all can get stuck in a quarter moon, but it changes in a month so we have to make the best to fill that quarter orb to a half than to a full moon.

When the moon is half full I think of the cliché.

Is the glass half full or half empty?

My children are like the half moon. They have a lifetime to fill it as we all do.

The full moon is—well the full moon. Like the name it implies it is now full of whom we are and the life we have led. My moon is about full.

The full moon gives light to the night and strength to the tides, and gravity to the earth. Anyone can be a full moon. Anyone can shine, be strong when needed and to anchor their lives to a happier place.

The phases of the moon are forced by nature to be continuous. All of us are under its spell. We all hold the beginning of a new, quarter, half and full moon to do as we please. The power we are given to create our own moon is great and it is not ours to waste.

Before I finish this contemplation I must say something about the man in the moon. When my eyes see the convoluted mountain shadows, valleys, and craters of the moon my mind turns those natural configurations into the face of a man. That facial image confirms my existence further than that of the surface of the earth. Finally, when the man in the moon winks at me I smile at his flirtatious attempt to bond me to the universe.

PATRICIA K. HELISEK

Moon Walk

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A full moon was high in the dark and starry sky when we started out on our walk. Its full pearl surface shone with a light orange cast. Of all heavenly orbs the moon was my favorite. For what ever reason, it held a focus of peace for me. The moon’s light did not provide enough shine for us to see our way but the street lights provided a great shimmery glow for us to walk over the uneven sidewalks hugging this city neighborhood. The summer night air was humid and encased our skin like a silk blouse. I thought this warm night was just as magical as the forests in a Mid Summer Nights Dream.

I was walking with my youngest sister who lived in the first block of our stroll. Other walkers were out that night too. They walked singly or in pairs or with their dogs on leashes. It was nine in the evening and we could see people through large picture windows watching their TV sets in the numerous houses we passed. This was a neighborhood of people who worked in factories, hospitals, malls, small business and offices. The houses were clean and neat with manicured lawns. As we walked we could smell the left-overs from the dinner meals that conscientious homemakers made that night. I could recognize meatloaf here and fried chicken there and I wished I could be invited in for a snack. However these dinner smells could not cover the delightful essences of the sweet honey suckle bushes that landscaped the numerous homes we passed. The soft spray of water from lawn sprinklers added to the night’s sounds. Our presence and talking incited some dogs to bark for rabbits to scurry in the low bushes. As we walked, we began to talk about many topics. We shared our week and the kind of day we had at work and at home. In due course the topics became much deeper than our family’s health and happenings. We opened up to each other as good sisters can. We began to talk about our relationships with our husbands and our problems and worries about our kids. Eventually we talked about our should-of(s), could-of(s) and if-only(s) in our lives.

What would my life be, I pondered aloud, If I had married another man; if I stayed in Detroit rather then moving to Bridgeport; if I pursued a career in art rather than teaching; and if I had that third child?

My sister listened with extreme patience and then calmly assured me that my life turned out pretty damn good. She pointed out the obvious.

What man would have been so faithful and patient throughout your turbulent twenty years together? she asked.

Would you have had a consistently happier life in Detroit rather than Bridgeport or so fulfilling?

Would art have been as satisfying and rewarding as teaching?

Are not your grown children enough joy in your life?

I did not respond to her simple remarks but I did contemplate them. As we continued to walk side by side I repeatedly gazed up at the moon as it was rising even further into the dark sky. We walked in silence past the obscured houses, the shadowy park, and the elementary school, and we eventually circled the block to her house.

A flush of serenity washed over me as we approached her steps and all the tension I felt that day was gone. I then realized that I had one good sister by my side. She was by far exceptional since she proved to me that night to be nonjudgmental, supportive and wise. I thought to myself that this night walk was not only magical