The Supermoon    

     Evidently, photographers as a whole, generally get excited about a few certain things:  good, available light; street photography, especially when shot in black and white; decayed, abandoned buildings, and the more graffiti and rusty remnants, the better; and something called a Supermoon.  Yes, that's right, a Supermoon.  It's much like Superman or Supermom or Super-sized fast-food value meals.  The Supermoon.

     The Supermoon,  the full moon at its brightest and biggest in the entire year because of its extremely close proximity to the Earth in its elliptical orbit, got my friends in my photography circles all abuzz, talking it up as if the Pope himself were coming for a visit, or if the Jets were going to be playing in the Superbowl.  There were lengthy discussions on how marvelous it would be to behold, there were practice shots days taken days before. Lengthy conversations about camera settings at which they planned to shoot ensued, as well as where in New York City would be the best vantage points to capture the magnificence of the much-anticipated Supermoon.

     But of course, as intrigued as I was about something that would be so awe-inspiring as to be dubbed as "Super," I had better things to do than worry about a big, fat, bright moon. I had to be a mom.  It was the weekend, after all.  Who really cared about a large, big ball in the sky, which most of my friends who were not photographers had never even heard of.  Not me! I had things to do, kids to taxi around. Never mind also that that it was Cinco De Mayo, and the rest of the single world was plotting where they would consume the most Coronas and margaritas with their compadres.  I had a job to do. I have three children.

     So that Saturday, my girls, ages 12, 8, and 8 (yes, twins... please continue to pray for me), got it into their heads that they should go to the Bronx Zoo (prior to their swim meet later in the afternoon), where we had visited a couple of weeks earlier during their Easter break, because they had not adequately enjoyed all its exhibits and because they had not the desired time to ride the carousel of bugs, they explained. Nor did they fully enjoy monkees long enough or the tigers and the tiger parade around the tiger area behind the glass, where I'm pretty sure they had their noses pushed up against the glass for nearly an hour at the last visit. They made a pretty convincing argument to head up to the Bronx.

     But alas, times restraints dictated we go to the closer in proximity Staten Island Children's Museum, where the girls (well, the twins really;  my eldest daughter pretty much texted the entire time) were able to run amok on all three levels, building houses with giant wooden boards, pretend to rock-climb in the Arctic and rock-hop in the "Great Explorations" area.  They played ad-nauseum on the fire truck, and pretended to be ladybugs and veterinarians in "It's a Bugs Life."  The good news is that they had a great time. The bad news that they tired not one iota after a couple of hours of wild playing, which was a good thing, because off we went to a swim meet immediately thereafter.

     Swim meets for me are always fun nowadays as a spectator, because I have three swimmers in the meet, and not just one, which is how it was before the twins took up the sport competitively.  Because when you think about it, hours of driving and sitting in the stiflingly hot and humid indoor pool is really a sacrifice to watch only one of your darlings swim for a total of about 2 minutes over three events. So I'm lucky in that my three girls have a cumulative, approximate 9 minutes to reward me for all my troubles of driving them and feigning interest when other people's kids swim. It makes the boredom, well, less boring.

     The meet went "swimmingly" well, as the girls were triple and doubles winners each (which means they won two of their three of their events in which they raced, if not all of them), respectively to their descending ages, and the side effect for me was that they were aptly exhausted, finally, at meet's end.  So much so that my husband and I had no qualms about calling my in-laws for last-minute babysitting duties and embarking upon... (drum roll , please) the hunt for the Supermoon!

     The drive into Manhattan from Staten Island is always a glorious one, and not because we were leaving behind, at least for a few hours, the constant, sometimes delightful, but often annoying chatter of young children, but because the bridge into Brooklyn is the gorgeous Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. As night falls and Manhattan becomes lit up with a million twinkling lights, the splendor of New York City is unyielding. And even though there was oodles of traffic on the Gowanus, too... who cared? Not us! We were on furlough. 

     Now, mind you, the drive in a car with just my husband and me is quite different from when our girls are with us. The music is Frank Sinatra or Erasure, instead of One Direction and Justin Beiber. There is not a constant narrative of how many other cars on the highway have dogs as passengers or who was invited to whose party and who wasn't. There are no arguments about who gets what Go-Go and there is an absence of sharp crackling noises of the Cheetos bag being passed around because they are "starving," even though they were invariably just fed a nutritious lunch by yours truly an hour prior.  When the girls are at Grandma's, it is just Michael and me!

     The search for the Supermoon required first that we made a stop for dinner.  The sky looked cloudy and we thought we'd give it time to clear up with some mulligatawny soup. We went to Little India, around 6th Street and First Avenue, walking for a few blocks, perusing menus and some really gawdy storefronts along the way, but all smelling delicious, until we found an Indian restaurant that looked authentic enough so we knew it would be good, but modern enough so we didn't contract dysentery, should we need to use the facilities. 

     And we were not disappointed.  Everything was savory and just-right spicy. And cheap.  And good service to boot. Plus, there was live music, comprised of a solitary Indian man, cross-legged on an elevated platform, chanting, singing and strumming his sitar, right next to our table.  So an order of chicken tikka masala, shrimp vindaloo, nan and aloo-palak, not to mention a couple of drinks (leave it to us to have Taj beers on Cinco de mayo), later, we were full and happy. 

     And above all, we laughed.  We talked and we laughed and it was as if we were dating again (although I do recall when we actually WERE first dating, and he took me for Indian food for the first time, I was kind of offended how literally distasteful and way too spicy and not to my liking the indian cuisine was. Who'd ever think it'd be my favorite now?).

     That night, in search of the Supermoon, was reminscent of the days before the stresses of running two dental offices, the times before discussions of where our eldest daughter would consider attending high school in a couple of years, the days before mortgages and taxes and our parents' health issues.  It reminded me of our past, when we were younger... and happier. 

     Now mind you, our marriage is in good shape, don't get the wrong idea and start making a list of divorce lawyers to recommend to us. If you have been married for more than seven years, I think you can totally relate.  And if you can't, then I think you're lying. In our case, in the few weeks leading up to Supermoon weekend, things had been very stressful at work and the kids' swim, soccer, and softball schedules, not to mention piano and tennis lessons, were hectic. In additon, generally I was easily annoyed at something (or everything) poor Michael did or said, or even the WAY he did or said something (or everything).  You know, the normal stuff that couples married 16 and a half years feel.  At times. And at times more often than others.  It had been one of those times.

     But the night of the Supermoon, we were unfettered.The kids were safe and were NOT with us. I rambled on about my photography and some patients at the office, what I wanted to wear at our friends' upcoming wedding, my plans to redecorate one of the kids' bedrooms, how I would like him to have fixed the broken sliding door on our minivan, and did he like the color I had my nails done last week, all mundane stuff... but with one big difference:  I had Michael's undivided attention! It was long time in coming and quite refreshing.

     So after our mango ice cream, we sauntered out into the street and looked up. There was not a star to be seen. The sky was cloudy as can be, beyond the thick layer of fog hanging under it. We had hoped the sky would clear up, even for just a moment so I could just snap a couple of frames, my trusty Canon at the ready. No luck. All that hype for naught. No Supermoon. No incredible captures to post on my Facebook tomorrow or email my sisters and my closest photographer friends. No anything. None. Zippo. Nada. Kaput. 

     But what I did get in return that evening in the hunt for the elusive Supermoon, was an evening with my husband.  And we had a great time. And we had a lot of laughs and a belly full of great food in the most fabulous city in the world. I was reminded why he was my best friend and why I decided to accept his offer to go on a date with him in August of 1990. And why, after 22 years and three beautiful children together, I still like him. And for that I was grateful.