Good Morning, Moon!

I always start my day with my equivalent of your morning coffee, a senior Diet Coke from McDonalds. I drink about half of it, but it gets my engine running.  "Forty seven cents at the first window," the speaker says. 

Here in Lawrenceville, the second window (the pick up window) frames the face of a young woman wearing an orange scarf and smiling.  She is Bangladeshi.  

In the beginning Carlene was always with me, so she always asks about "your mama."  When she hands me my drink, she reaches out to shake my hand.

One day, I asked her how she spelled her name, Moon.  I had assumed, with her accent, her name might be spelled differently.  

She smiled and spelled it out M-O-O-N.

In the last week, she has started saying "I love you" to me.  And adding "Say also to your mama when you go there." 

This morning I asked her, "Have you ever heard of the book Goodnight Moon?"

She nodded yes, but I'm not entirely sure she understood me. I will order a copy of the book for her. But in the meanwhile, I will see her every morning and often my first words of the day--unless I'm on the phone with my mama--are, "I love you."

After she reaches out to shake my hand, she blows me a kiss and I start to drive away.  I say, "Love you too" and "See you tomorrow." 

"Not tomorrow," she says, "Is my day off."  Then she hands me an extra drink, for free, to cover Monday Missing Moon.