The Last Moon Between Two Buildings

I was walking through a spot I pass almost every day, somewhere between our building and the next, when I looked up out of habit. Two familiar apartment towers stood on either side of me, and right between them hung a round, bright moon. On any other night I would have walked right past it. Tonight I stopped and took a photo instead. Tomorrow, I won’t be standing in this exact spot to see it again.

The Core Story

1. The last moonlight

Day two of packing. Yesterday we cleared out Raon’s room. Today we finished the rest of the apartment. Somewhere in the middle of hauling boxes, I looked up and there it was, that moon. Nothing special about it, really, just an ordinary near-full moon. But the moment I attached the words “the last time I’ll see this, from here” to it, the whole scene looked different.

2. The room where robots and dinosaurs used to live

Raon’s room looks nothing like it used to. That display shelf once overflowed with Transformers, Gundam models, and dinosaur figures, so packed you could barely see the wood behind them (a robot once got “eaten” by a dinosaur’s jaws right there, and my own robot famously lost a battle to Mom’s T-rex on that same shelf). Today, all that’s left are neatly stacked moving boxes. The floor is bare down to the vinyl flooring, and a little globe sits alone on top of one of the boxes, like it’s quietly pointing the way to wherever we’re headed next.

Even the shelf in the corner, the one still holding a few stray toys and minifigures, is halfway through its own goodbye. The boxes piling up in front of it are only a matter of time.

3. A reality that hasn’t landed yet

For Raon, this move is still more of an idea than a fact. Even with the boxes gone and the room emptied out, I don’t think the feeling of actually leaving has caught up with him yet. That feeling will probably show up somewhere unexpected, in the new place, in some ordinary moment when a habit he never thought twice about suddenly feels off. When that happens, Shun-nim and I already know what we need to do: not rush, not panic, just meet him at his level and put a name to whatever strange feeling shows up.

Parenting Note/Tip

A move means something different to a kid than it does to an adult. The hard part usually isn’t the packing. It’s some random afternoon after you’ve already settled into the new place, when something small and unfamiliar sneaks up on your child out of nowhere. So I’m planning to pay closer attention to the weeks after the move than to moving day itself. If even one adult is there to notice that moment and give it a name, a kid can cross that kind of change far more easily.

Closing

Starting tomorrow, it’s a new address, a new sky, a new moon. I won’t see tonight’s moon again for a while, but someday I’ll tell Raon that wherever you go, it’s always the same moon looking back. Goodnight, and see you in the next Raonlog!