Mom and Dad

We grew side by side for a long time, yes we did.

We spun round and round.

Always facing each other, always reflecting each other’s smiles.

At first it was just us, alone together, watching the stars. It was peaceful and gentle. I told her I loved her, and she said she felt the same. We vowed to stay together until the end of time, her and I. For decades, centuries, millennia, and eons.

Eventually, we chose a place to settle down and create life, so we could grow old watching the products of our labor. It was tragically difficult. We worked hard to birth the beings we now called our children. It did not come easy. We had many failures, and after many years, she grew discouraged. She was about to give up: creating life required so much effort, such precision, such intense care and caution. It was a kind of devotion that we did not know if we could provide. But, just as we had lost all hope, it happened.

When they first began to walk, I saw tears in her eyes and it warmed my heart in a way I never knew possible. When they began to draw on the walls of their home, she smiled gently and watched them with an intense fascination. When they learned to run, climb, and get into all sorts of trouble, she glanced at me, glowing with immeasurable pride.

We grew side by side for a long time like that, and we relished in the life we created. We enjoyed seeing them running about, growing up and growing old. We helped them find their way.

Just between you and me, the little ones were her favorite. The stumbling-shrieking-salivating messes. I suppose she saw past that, though. She saw their chubby fingers, angled up towards the sky with hope coursing through every cell. She saw their innocent smiles, toothless and pure. She saw infinite potential in their bright little eyes.

I was more impartial. I liked them all: they were odd little things, quite entertaining to watch. She said it was mean of me to chuckle when they fought their wars, or when they wasted their time loving things that didn’t matter. She said my job was to guide them, not to mock them. I couldn’t help it, though: they were so silly and stupid. Their mistakes were always petty and harmless, and quite amusing.

That is, until things began to grow cloudy.

It was like a virus, insidious and evil. It snaked its way through our hard work, breathing its soft poison on everything it met. In the grand scheme of things, it worked its magic quickly. It only took a few hundred years.

We didn’t care too much at first. Our children were hardy, tough. They had fought worse before, and come out stronger on the other end. They would beat this.

First it was the little ones. The virus melted soft, sweet blades of grass and chewed on fishes like they were candy. They wasted away and sighed smoky breaths. Of course nobody noticed. We just kept on spinning, round and round.

I remember when it was discovered. The skies had begun to grow foggy and the air was harder to breathe. The summers boiled and the winters froze. And when they found out, they blamed her. Our children, the ones we created. They blamed her for suffocating them. I wanted to scream at them, to make them understand it was their fault, not hers. Never hers. But I kept to myself. Meddling would do no good.

They squabbled more often. What to do, who to blame. She and I looked at each other and sighed. How could we make them understand?

But blaming each other did little. The air grew thick like pea soup and the virus didn’t bother to hide anymore. It reared its ugly head and swallowed entire cities. Waves that reached hundreds of feet and puddles that evaporated in seconds. And still, they squabbled.

When she peered at them now, it was no longer with warm affection and endless love. Now, when she stared at our children, it was with concern and nail-biting anxiety. I wanted to comfort her, to tell her I could fix them and make her smile again. But there was nothing I could do. I knew that.

Our friends circled us like vultures, making snide comments in hushed voices. We pretended not to see them, their furtive glances and shocked whispers. But we knew. We knew they could see our mistake for what it was, and we knew that each of our friends was silently thanking whatever higher power they believed in that they didn’t have the same misfortune.

Our children didn’t look up to us any longer, with a sense of wonder and awe-- for they could not see us. The virus enveloped them like a thick blanket, snuggling them as a boa constrictor snuggles a rabbit. They were blind with rage, and couldn’t see past their own feet.

And then the virus took them, as we knew it would. We watched with immense sadness as it picked them off, one by one.

After they were gone, we found it harder and harder to keep up our daily routine. We tried, of course, but we couldn’t bear to look down and see the naked planet where our children once smiled. We spun round and round, slower and slower, until we stopped spinning. And then we drifted apart. Farther and farther. Until I couldn’t see her radiant light. And then she was gone.

We grew side by side for a long time, yes we did. We watched each other for centuries, millennia, eons. But after watching the only life we ever knew destroy itself, we knew we could be together no longer. And so her, the Sun, and I, the Moon, broke our bonds and went our own ways.

I will always remember her, the one who grew their plants and warmed their skin. But without our children, those wonderful, terrible humans that roamed the Earth, creating and destroying, living and dying, I just feel terribly depressed. And not even the Sun can make me smile.