She had always loved the moon and sun and stars. As a child on the old New Hampshire farm she could see the sky from her bed under the window, and she watched the movement of the moon and stars across the rectangle of her vision. Her favorite time was before dawn when the sky began to lighten but the stars were still visible. That was her perfect time.
When she was twelve and her family had left the worn out old farm and headed for Iowa, she slept outside when it wasn't raining hard and the hugeness of it all almost terrified her. She sensed the stars behind the stars behind the stars that she could see. The wonder of it.
She studied every book she could find on astronomy. At normal school where she trained to become a teacher, she was invited to lecture her fellow students. Her talk was very successful. Questions came fast afterward. She wished she had a map. There was a beautiful metal model of the planets strung on metal orbits around the sun. It was available in the educational materials catalog of the Milton Bradley company of Massachusetts, but it cost a fortune. She could not buy it.
She taught school out in the corn fields for thirty farm children and she tried to light their interest in astronomy or anything else that held their attention. When she married she gave up teaching and worked on her husband's farm and gave birth to seven babies. Life was hard. The work never stopped, but she would steal sweet moments in her day and night to greet the moon and sun when they appeared at a window or in the branches of the cottonwood by the creek.
She knew the moon affected her. Her period always came with the full moon, so when the full moon came and she wasn't bleeding she knew she carried another child.
Later, when she was sick, it was with the full moon that she would cough blood. She rinsed her handkerchief under the pump by the light of the moon.
When her youngest child was out of diapers she sewed a quilt to illustrate the movement of the planets. She started lecturing on astronomy at Grange Halls and schools within twenty miles of home, or even further sometimes - even to Davenport. She would speak with the quilt unrolled and pinned to the wall behind her, and the questions would come fast and when she saw the light of interest in people's eyes she felt such a gladness.
She grew weaker, coughed blood all the time now, not just with the moon. The last activity she relinquished was her lecture circuit.
When she died her husband wanted to wrap her in her planet quilt, but her daughters said ``no, we must keep it to remember her,'' and they did.