Two Moons

The luminous moon sits patiently above the coffee crag that threatens to burst her creamy bubble. Her brilliance penetrates the sapphire abyss; the air close to her glows like a spring morning. Straggling behind sits a lesser sphere. Dangerously close to the cliff, she yearns to reach her superior’s altitude. Painter Henrietta Shore captured my two worlds with haunting precision.

There have been few amazing women in my life, but the ones that inspire greatness live close to home in both my genes and in my heart. At times, their love is as subtle as moonlight; I acknowledge it, but I cannot begin to fathom its depths.

***

Grandma Sanford, who is actually my maternal great-grandmother, loved me with tolerance. When summer sunsets swept sweet hickory into my nostrils, the wind wandered through her wind chimes. Her creaky porch swing kept rhythm like a metronome. With my head in her lap, I’d reach up and flap the dangling skin under her chin, following the beat of the swing’s springs. Back and forth. Two and four. I probably annoyed her, but she patiently let me pester her with my unusual, unflattering affection.

***

Grandma Horrocks (also my maternal great-grandmother) loved me with subtle sacrifice. When I recall my first car accident, I remember her.

When a distracted driver plowed into my mom’s car, the impact threw my head against the passenger window. I heard a nurse telling my mom to keep me conscious. Time spliced like jump cuts in a movie, and before I knew it, we were going to Grandma Vera’s house. On the drive, my mom repeatedly asked me if I was okay; each time I nodded like a robot. Waiting for me were some Ibuprofen and a tape filled with Garfield cartoons. I perched on the brown floral, crushed velvet couch (which remains in the same place now as it did then), staring vacantly at the TV. Mindlessly feeding myself musty Neccos and stale orange Tic-Tacs, I knew I only got away with eating so much sugar because my mom kept reminding me that I wasn’t allowed to fall asleep.

The faint chatter from the dining room buzzed in my ears. My mom was probably recounting what had happened, but her distance blurred the words together. After a few minutes, Grandma Vera’s footsteps plodded down the hallway as she headed to Grandma Horrocks’s room. (Grandma Vera took care of Grandma Horrocks, refusing to put her mother-in-law in a nursing home.) I saw Grandma Horrocks emerge from the back bedroom, slowly sauntering toward me, her rickety walker supporting each small step.

“Let’s play Skip-Bo,” she invited, pointing to the dining room with a smile.

I leapt off the couch and darted to the dining room bookcase to grab the cards. Sitting at the table, in squeaky plastic chairs that smell like hospitals and still grace the dining room, Grandma Horrocks taught me to play Skip-Bo. For hours, she patiently played, her frail fingers clasped to the cards. She smiled and celebrated more at my victories than she did at her own. My success tasted sweeter to her because she saw the excitement in my eyes.

Every day, Grandma Horrocks faithfully watched “The Little House on the Prairie,” and afterward, she would take a nap. But not that day. Like me, Grandma didn’t sleep that afternoon.

***

My mother loses more sleep than anyone I know. She sat irritated in front of the bright computer monitor, ready to rupture my rebellious bubble. Every weekend, I pushed my curfew and her patience. Her fatigue weighed the air, heavy with frustration. Walking in late with no valid excuse, I robbed her of much-needed sleep. And yet, she still listened as I recalled the events of the evening. Detailing my first kiss with my first boyfriend, I watched her smile. Too tired to show her teeth, she curved one side of her mouth upward. Once, after a futile fight to save one of my many failing relationships, I laid my head in her lap and she would trace her fingernails softly across my face. When I was a baby, this was how she put me to sleep. Now, she shares my sorrows with each soft stroke.

When I moved away to college, my dad packed everything into my car and his. Leaving him to drive alone, my mom accompanied me on the drive. From the moment we left until I had unpacked my trivial life into an inhospitably empty space, I siphoned her strength. Squeezing my eyes shut so tight it hurt, spots shot behind my eyelids and I felt like I had been thrown from a merry-go-round. I spent years reaching for this independence. Yet, after achieving it, I didn’t want her to leave. I didn’t want to wake up alone in this four-walled wilderness. Without her, mornings wouldn’t waft the whiff of her crisp apple candles or homemade wassail into my room. So, undermining my newfound freedom, I asked her to stay. I didn’t care; I needed her.

I’ll always need her, and I fear the time when I’ll assume a position like hers. I have no clue how to get out a tomato stain, and I can’t make soup from scratch. French braiding forever remains a foreign feat to me. When making vain attempts to iron wrinkled laundry, my shirts turn out like raisins. In moments when my fear of failure fuels humility, I call her. And she always knows the answers.

“What temperature do I wash my towels?”

“Warm,” she says confidently.

“Is $1.29 per pound a good deal for nectarines?”

“No! 69 cents per pound would be a good deal,” she answers.

“How am I going to get through the week?”

“You just will. You always do.”

***

She is my constant, like the moon. Sometimes her brightness felt blinding, pointing out my mistakes with painful starkness. Other times, I selfishly buried her behind my petty problems and trivial teenage crises. Now, standing in the shadows, she still shines, sufficient to stop me from crashing across serrated mistakes.

Like a child groping fidgety fists upward into the air, I ache, aspiring to be at her altitude, envying her omniscience. I rack my wretched memory, trying to think of a time when she wasn’t there, but I know that it is futile. From spelling bees to orchestra concerts, she sat in the audience. Overhead lights and hundreds of faces tried to conceal her, but I knew she was there. Overwhelming all-nighters and a hundred miles of highway try to hide her now, but she is still here. I feel her sleepy, single-sided smile form when I ace a midterm. Her fingers trace my face when I come home crushed and conquered from a bad blind date. At the close of my best and worst days, she stays with me.

***

Henrietta Shore’s cubist composition reflects two moons on a tilted track. The azure exuding from their center comforts me because it is the same shade I see when I look into my mother’s eyes. It is the same shade of the eyes in the mirror.