Every night, I receive an email from my parents. My mom sends me a text before she starts getting ready for work, and my dad sends me an email from his workplace. So, every night at around 10:30pm, my phone rings or vibrates and lets me know that I have mail. The time difference between California and Japan is sixteen hours, so this is one of the few time windows where the three of us are in sync and able to talk. My parents send me a brief message before they start their busy days, and I am able to read it as my busy day comes to an end. It's a rare, quiet time in our schedules that we can make up for the distance between us and the responsibilities that occupy our time.
One night, I received an email from my dad with an attachment. He had attached a song to the email. He explained that the song, “Juan el Pescador”, was recorded in Mexico in 1968 by the musical group las Estrellas de Plata. He was twelve years old when the song was released, and when he was fourteen or fifteen years old, his older sister and her husband took him to buy the song. The single was on a two-song 45 rpm record. After having saved up his money for a long time, he was the proud owner of the vinyl record. He doesn't remember why he was drawn to that particular song, and even forgot about the song until he rediscovered it three years ago. And through that email, I discovered a moment in my dad's childhood. For the next four nights, I played that song while writing back to my dad's emails.
Five nights later, my dad sent me another song. This one was titled “Luna de Octubre.” The email was mostly blank, so I simply listened to the song and appreciated the traditional style of the trio. The next night, he sent another email where he quoted the song, “De las lunas, la de Octubre es más hermosa.” Roughly translated, “Of all the moons, October's moon is the loveliest.” He then asked me if I had had a chance to look up at the moon. He hadn't seen the moon lately, but he wondered if I could see it, since it was nighttime in Japan. It was October 9th and all I could see was a thin crescent. It was barely visible, but it was lovely.
Every night after, it became a friendly challenge to see who remembered to look for the moon. Sometimes it would slip my mind, but sometimes I would look for it as I biked home from the gym. We would share our “moon story” every night. One night, we had both seen the same moon. My dad had seen the moon as he drove to work in the early hours of the morning, before the sun fully rose. I had seen it on my way home from a late workout. Although we know that we see the same moon, it had really felt like we were under the same one.
It's harder for my dad and I to look out for each other with the distance and time difference. Yet, my dad felt that the moon was a way for us to make amends with both. When the sun is rising in California, and the moon camouflages itself into the daylight, the moon is still shining in Japan. So in a way, while I sleep and my dad goes about his daily obligations, the moon looks after me from the moment I make my way home every night. Reversely, as I teach and am occupied with work, the moon appears in California and watches over my family. Although we're living in different parts of the day and do not share the same time zone, we share the same moon. We are under the same moon. Estamos bajo la misma luna.
Bajo la misma luna. I borrowed the phrase from the title of a film that my brother once suggested we watch as a family. The film is about a Mexican mother who leaves her son in the care of his grandmother, in order to work in the United States and provide for her mother and son. Every week, she calls her son and tells him that they are under the same moon, and that it looks after him since she is so far away. When the grandmother passes away, the boy decides to enter the United States and look for his mother. He has no address and no proper documentation to enter the United States, and his journey is a dangerous one. However, he finds comfort in the moon, and sees it as a sign that his mother is watching over him. I won't spoil the movie for you, but the essential point is that the moon has symbolic value, and that regardless where they are geographically, they are under the same moon.
When I replied to my dad's insight about the moon, I included the phrase “bajo la misma luna.” He immediately understood where the phrase came from and what it meant.
On October 23rd, there was a full moon, and though it was a bit cloudy, it was still radiant in all its glory.
