I love you to the moon and back design

The lamp was dead when I climbed up at six, the wick gone black as a burnt match, so I spent the first hour on the brass with my bad thumb and a rag that smelled of paraffin. Dougie says the depot will send a new mantle on Thursday's boat, and until then the Carrick light is just a tall white stick. Don't tell your mother I swore at a lens. She'll only write back to say the Lord was listening.

Last night the moon came up over the point, fat and yellow, with a crater on its face that Dougie swears looks like a thumbprint. I sat on the gallery rail with my flask and counted the stars you'd have counted, and when I lost my place I did what you taught me and said your line out loud to nobody. I love you to the moon and back. The gulls didn't mind. The sea carried it east toward the mainland, which is as near to back as I can manage from here.

You asked in your last letter how far the moon is, and I told you a man at the chandlers' once said a fortnight by coach if the coach never stopped. You wrote back that the schoolmaster had set you straight, and it was a quarter of a million miles. You were right. You're always right about sums now. I suppose you'll be right about the moon as well.

So here is my sum. The light turns every ten seconds and throws its beam out twenty miles. Every night for a month I have counted those turns, and every night I get to the same number, which is you. Tell Mam I'm eating. Tell her the moon is still there.

Love to the moon and back, and the long way round by the rocks, Dad