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Lunar Love by Jody Seay The moon is our touchstone, a luminescent reminder that we are all in this together. Click to read Essay Profile of Author Bio of Author from ETG Essay, Late-breaking Developments Author's Comment on the ETG Experience Updated Bio Click to Purchase Send email to the author (The copyright on this essay is held by the author.  For permission to duplicate: copyright@cunepress.com)

Lunar Love
Do you ever feel as if the moon belongs to you? I do. Maybe not to me, personally, but more like to all of us. Yeah, the moon belongs to all of us, especially when it’s doing something snazzy like an eclipse or slashing a smile at us across the night sky.

On warm summer nights in Texas when I was a kid, the sky was so big and clear we could see the stardust. My mom would spread quilts in the backyard, and we’d lie on our backs, Mother and her pajama-clad crew, staring up at the stars, making up stories about the moon. We’d ask a million questions.

"Why is it called the Milky Way?"

"What makes the stars?"

"Are there people lying in their backyards on the stars looking at us?"

And Mother would answer each question the best she could. When I asked her, "What is the moon?" she replied, "A reflection of the sun."

In my child’s mind, a reflection was an illusion, like a spot on the wall reflected off the mirror in Mother’s compact, not a real thing or place to go. When President Kennedy announced that one of our goals as a nation was to land a man on the moon, I thought, "Boy, are those guys gonna be surprised! They’re gonna fly right through it!"

There is lots to know about the moon involving craters and moon dust and lunar modules and such, but that’s never struck a chord with me. What’s important to me has more to do with how we feel in our hearts when we look up in the sky and see it there, shimmering, almost close enough to touch.

At least one night each month the moon gives us its very best shot. No longer is it 238,857 miles away but just right . . . out . . . there—stunning us all, taking our breath away. We scramble into our homes, a look of half-crazed joy on our faces, screaming to our loved ones, "Have you seen the moooooon???" and we drag them outside to ooohh and aaahh with us and sit on the porch and admire it some more and maybe say thank you to God or the universe or whatever power thought the whole thing up in the first place. The native Americans call the moon Grandmother, and that’s always been a sweet thought to me—something beautiful and glowing, steady and dependable, something you can count on. Yeah, Grandmother Moon.

But it’s more than that. Squinting into a telescope at a full moon a few weeks ago, I remembered how I felt as a kid. Lying in our backyard on a quilt that always smelled vaguely like my Aunt Roxie, it occurred to me then (and I still believe now), that mine couldn’t be the only family lying in its backyard admiring the moon. And if there was only one moon for us all to enjoy and we all did, then somehow we were all connected and maybe not nearly so different as we tend to think. If the moon affects the tides and our moods and how rapidly our blood flows, then it is easier to understand how gazing up at it can make you kiss a stranger and fall in love. I find this thought most comforting—to know I’m not the only one who looks at the full moon and wants to yell, "Yahoo!" and jump off the garage.

The moon is our touchstone, a luminescent reminder that we are all in this together. We sing songs about it, write poems about it, and plant crops by it. We watch for it, stare at it, and respect its power. So I had this idea, you see, one not too far-fetched for a person who spends a lot of time staring, moony-eyed, up at the sky.

Although not perfect, our world is changing. People everywhere are standing up for freedom, demanding their voices be heard, and all of this seems to have happened simply because it is time. So, since we are now pals with Russia and it looks like we won’t be needing that squillion dollar defense budget after all, whaddya say we cash in a big old bomber and put that money to better use? Yep, just drag that baby over to the recycling center and plunk it down. Then we can take that money and buy quilts for the world. Yeah, quilts would be good. In the fall and winter we can all cover up. In the spring we can go on picnics. And on those velvety, lukewarm summer nights, we can spread our quilts out on the earth, our communal backyard, and lie on our backs gazing up at the sky, feeling at one with the world, and the moon. Thank you, Grandmother.

Profile
Portland’s winter of 1995–96 was one for the history books. Record floods, rain, cold. In the midst of natural catastrophe, I was giving author reading/signings at local bookstores. As it turned out, on every night that I was scheduled, the newscasters warned the public to stay indoors "or else." Just what every author wants to hear.

On one such night of high natural disaster in mid-December, I was to give a two-hour forum on my book Animals as Teachers and Healers for New Renaissance Bookstore, a lovely shop in downtown Portland that I refer to as the incense capital of the Northwest. That night I met Jody Seay. I had invited her to read a story of hers, "Holy Cow," that appears in my book. I feared that she and I would be the only souls brave enough or stupid enough to face the weather. I was wrong. We filled the house that night—every last seat. New Renaissance was stunned and suddenly delighted that the weather was so bad. "We’d never have been able to accommodate the crowd," they said.

Perhaps it was the electricity of the storm raging outside, or maybe the collective enthusiasm of a death-defying, animal-loving audience. Simply put, the evening became magical when Jody took the floor. All Texas drawl and desert-dry wit, Jody is a woman who could make a bunion belly-laugh or a stone weep. I suspect the audience was disappointed when she sat down, and I came back onstage. I know I was. I thought maybe I’d ask her if she’d be willing to impersonate me at future readings.

Jody has completed her first novel, The Second Coming of Curly Red. A book of her own essays is also in the works. And she rolfs my husband once a week.

—Susan Chernak McElroy

Bio
Jody Seay
Place of residence: Milwaukie, Oregon.
Birthplace: Dallas, Texas.
Day job: Certifed rolfer.
Education: English major.
Serial publications: Dallas Life. Massage. The Justin Wheeler.
Award: Junior Bowler. Ten-Year Record for High-Point Game, 1963.
Current project: Gentle Tales from a Ragged Life—a collection of essays.
Favorite book: Animals as Teachers and Healers by Susan Chernak McElroy (Ballantine; originally New Sage Press).
Fantasy: Compete in dangerous sports.
A past life: I once won a drinking, spitting, and cussing contest in Central City, Colorado—back when I drank, a long time ago. The contest was spontaneous, a bunch of drunk people in an alley between two bars.
Advice for film-lovers: Next time you are at the movies, get a couple of Milk Duds going pretty good and then stuff a handful of popcorn in there—it’s so good it will make your tongue jump up and slap your brains, as we used to say in Texas.
Meat: One of my grandfathers was a cattle rancher in Nocona, Texas. We grew up on red meat, but when I became an adult I couldn’t always afford it. And then I became a thinking person and didn’t want it. Still, sometimes I miss the homestead.
A secret: Broke and hungry? You can take a baked potato and run it through some steak sauce and fool yourself into thinking you’ve just had a T-bone.
Life membership: The thing about being a Texan, wherever you go you’ll still always be one—it’s stamped on your DNA. Even if your parents just broke out of Huntsville State Prison (that’s down south of Houston) and they stole a car and headed east, and your mama gave birth to you just before the state line at Texarkana, and they kept on going—you’d still be a Texan.

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