The Moon in the Water: Reflections on an Aging Parent

Willy Moon

29 Willy Moon Kuan Yin is sitting on a rock at the edge of the water, one ankle resting on the other knee. This time she surprises me by holding a baby, whose feet are standing shakily on her bent leg. This Child-Giving Kuan Yin is later than the Water-Moon Kuan Yin but still draws on the earlier conventions: same willow in a jar, same surrounding waterswirls . Oh, and her raised foot again looks upside down: same string of hacks copying a master’s pattern but still not quite getting the hang of the job. A bird swoops low, eyeing the willow, as the baby reaches up gleefully. Dad is dragging around on his swollen feet, worn out, lonesome for his old home, uncomplaining. I can’t think of anything to say. I keep getting, then losing, the hang of this job. Meanwhile, Willy Lump-Lump is lounging in his blue-and-white striped nightshirt on the bureau in the room where Dad is now living. This seven-inch rag doll, battered and begrimed, has survived the years since Dad made him for me at the sewing machine. I must have been about six then, for my eyes just matched the level of Dad’s big work hands, guiding the cloth under the machine needle, pounding away. Of course, sometimes a sewing machine needle races ahead of even the best work hands, 30 The Moon in the Water and Will emerged from the creative fit with one small foot and one big foot, one small arm, one big arm, plus a frankly hydrocephalic head. Yes, I did have the word hydrocephalic in my vocabulary as a child, but not until three years later, when I stayed in the hospital for a week by myself—I mean, without my parents—to have my own oddly formed feet operated on. I was by myself, but whenever I managed to turn my gaze away from the large, shocking absence of my parents, I noticed that I was far from alone, for I met Norman, with a hernia; Julie, with leukemia; and my nameless roommate, a silent baby with hydrocephalus. I at least observed, if I did not properly meet, this child with water on the brain, water making his head moon. I remember that the baby’s head bulged out, like Will’s after his turn around the sewing machine. Kuan Yin’s breast, as the baby leans against her, picks up the pulse from that bounding brain, unaccommodated by usual bodies. Will’s brain was fine, despite his head size, so Dad hand-stitched him wistful dashes for each eye and a faint smile, to indicate that the lumpy lad was unfazed by mismatched left and right sides. Now, many years later, Will “speaks” as I move him over to Dad’s bed. “What do they mean, ‘Elevate your feet, elevate your feet?’ ” Will complains, holding up his big, water-retaining foot. “Do they mean I should stand on my head?” Will flips over sarcastically, to illustrate the blithe mandates of doctors. Dad laughs. Ah, a toe drawn right. Reflections on an aging PaRent 31 Dad is remembering: “I liked it when he had a red heart.” A portrait of Will with a red heart had winged its way to the hospital in a get-well letter when Dad received his implanted defibrillator, six months ago. Dad ponders, “Does he have a red heart now?” and takes the liberty of checking under Will’s frayed nightshirt. “Well,” I prevaricate, “he insisted I draw a red heart on his portrait in a letter to you at the hospital.” Dad is enormously pleased. “I can’t believe I was just messin’ around at the sewing machine one day, poked the cloth inside out and stuffed it, and he’s still in the, in the talk. You never know what’ll turn out to be important.” “‘Course I’m important. Just ’cause I’m bald now,” I ventriloquize for Will. Dad muses for a while: “He was never not bald.” In the get-well letter, which I found still afloat on Dad’s card table in New Jersey eight weeks after posting, the words along the left side of that distinctive silhouette—one big foot, hydrocephalic head—reported that Will had called me from the bureau drawer, asking a favor. “Sure, Will. What is it?” “Would you write to Marvin and...