WOE: To The Moon

Prompt:  you have 500 words to write a piece, fiction or non-fiction, which includes the phrase “to the moon.”    Sorry this is late, but the power was out here last night.  This is non-fiction.
 

"...to the moon."  

The announcer's voice pulled on my attention.  I wandered into the room where my parents sat in front of the television, curious.  My parents were mesmerized, staring at the screen.   A white, blurry, egg-shaped contraption with legs seemed to glow from the black and white picture.  An astronaut was jerkily bouncing down the ladder, looking as if he were made of marshmallows, big and puffy.  

"What's that?" I asked my parents. 

"It's men landing on the moon." My mother never took her eyes off the television, caught in the moment.   Surprised, I raced outside into the backyard.   I had just turned four, but I knew where the moon was.

The moon had already risen in the sky above El Paso, a slice of white and gray in the blue of the afternoon sky.  It seemed to be very close.  I strained my eyes and craned my neck, certain that I should be able to see the marshmallow men up there, bouncing on the moon.  


There was nothing to see. It seemed to me that if there were people walking on the moon, the moon should look different. There should be some indication, however small, that an event so momentous had occurred.  Instead, the moon looked as placid as it always did.   I kept my eyes on the moon, just in case, until my father came outside to find me.  My dad, when he was able to stop laughing, explained that the moon, though it looked close, was actually very far away.  I was disappointed, but undefeated.  

I continued to stare at the moon every chance I got for the entire summer, hoping to see a footprint, or the red of the American flag...something. I finally understood that I would never be able to see what was happening on the far-away moon with my naked eye, and that was a sad day for me.  Yet some imaginings don't fade so easily.  Even today, when I look up in the sky, there's still that little girl in the back of my mind, peering intently at the moon, still dreaming.