Three Moonlets

William and I watched a Nova special on "Alien Moons" last night, and the narrator caught my attention when she said that moons can be any size at all, though they only really count when their diameter hits 1 - 2 km and they are officially termed a "moonlet."  Following up with Wikipedia, I got more: "A minor moon or natural satellite orbiting a planet." As I drifted off to sleep, mentally filtering through our family's gratitude points and our needs, I pictured the children as moonlets, orbiting around Rob and me. Now that Rob is out of town during the week, I feel their orbits leaning toward my side of Planet Parent, and the gravity tugs a bit hard.

Moons often orbit irregularly, either drifting slowly away from their planet (until one day they spin off, free, on their own trajectory), or slowly losing the fight with their planet's gravitational pull, drifting gradually closer until the force rips them apart.  Children, of course, tend to have the first type of orbit, which I can see with Aden, as she enters her senior year and drifts ever further from us. Occasionally, force of habit or dire need ("Does this t-shirt go with these jeans?) means her return from the far reaches of her orbit/ room to get an opinion, money, or reassurance.

It sometimes seems as if need pulls the children into the second, more dangerous type of orbit.  Homework stress, health issues, friend drama; forces that strengthen parental gravity and pull the child moon orbit in so closely that we could be twin planets, spiraling around one another with increasingly dangerous intensity. I am usually the body that explodes (or implodes, as the case may be) in defiance of all laws of planetary physics.

The visual of moons A, W, and D orbiting parental planet Dravenstott appeals to me. I need to focus on maintaining a healthy separation, a relatively normal elliptical orbit - sometimes they're closer and sometimes farther away. When Rob comes home for long weekends I may temporarily abdicate the mother ship. And as the moonlets increase their ranges, preparing to spin off,  I will miss the weight of their gravity, but recognize their need to find a bright new system.