Banana Moon

Right before going to bed last night I noticed a beautiful banana moon hanging outside my bedroom window. I thought of my grandfather. Last October he passed away after a long and wonderful life. Here is an essay I wrote for his funeral:

I’ve always loved a banana moon. Not only because it is a gorgeous sight on a dark night, but because that thin slice ties me to my grandfather. I don’t know all of the details of the original story of me, my grandpa, and the banana moon, because I was very young, and very feverish. But I do know that for the last thirty years, every time I happen to glance up and see it, my thoughts go first to my grandfather. And I’ve known that wherever he is, if he sees it, he’s been thinking of me.

I’ve been told that when I was four years old I developed a sudden high fever while at a mother/daughter function of some sort. The fever got so high that I had a seizure, so my mom quickly rushed me over to her sister Judy’s house where I was given an ice bath and my fever went down a bit. But I was still quite listless and unwell. It was the general consensus that my mother should not drive home with me alone in the back seat, so my grandfather volunteered to sit with me. At this point I was completely out of it, and there was a good deal of anxiety about how this was all going to end. But on the drive home, I stirred, glanced out the car window, mustered enough strength to say, “Look Grandpa, a banana moon,” then slipped back into unconsciousness. This was enough to convince my grandfather that I was going to be alright. When I recovered, he told me the tale of my midnight sighting of the moon. I’m sure I would have forgotten the story if he hadn’t continued to call me over the years whenever he happened to spot a banana moon.

The calls diminished in frequency as we both got older, but I know that on my half, the thoughts did not. I simply can not see a banana moon and not see my grandfather as well. And I know that the same was true for him, because the calls did continue to come, although sporadically. And those calls seemed to come when I was yearning for some kind of check in, some assurance that whatever I was doing was going to come out alright.

Once I left home for college, he moved to Florida full time, and I felt that universal feeling of spreading my wings and heading out beyond my family. I was a fairly confident kid, but grandpa’s occasional calls to my dorm room reminded me that we still shared the same moon, and that my grandpa was out there rooting for me, and that was a great comfort. When I went overseas to serve in the Peace Corps I was living without a phone and out of regular contact with everyone back home, but he got word to me anyway. He went through the trouble to reach the Peace Corps office and left a cryptic message. It just said, “Grettie, there was a banana moon hanging over the Gulf of Mexico last night, how did it look over the Caribbean?” The woman who took the message was baffled, but it sure made sense to me.

About two years ago, as I was working my way through the first years of starting my own family, I really used that connection to the moon and my grandfather. My youngest son Theo developed a very high fever late one night. I remember holding his hot little body in my arms and thinking, this is not going to end well. He started into a seizure and I got a little panicky. My husband quickly called 911 and almost before the seizure ended there was a medical team at our door. They checked Theo’s vitals and gave me assurances that he was going to be ok. Looking at his pale, limp, body, I doubted them. They said they needed to take him to the ER so I went with him in the ambulance. No, I did not catch a glimpse of a lovely banana moon out the window of the ambulance, I think it was raining. But I did think of it. And I did think of my grandpa going through this very thing with me, and I was comforted, and I did start to believe that it was all going to come out alright. And it did.

A few weeks ago I was out on a retreat with students from my school. It was freezing cold for September and we were huddled around a campfire. As I looked through the tree branches I spotted a gorgeous sliver of a banana moon hanging over the St. Croix River. I thought of my grandfather down in Florida, and I shared our story with my students. I should have gone up the path back to the cabin, to my cell phone, and called him. I didn’t. But I did send him my love over the skies. Now, this morning, I received word that he has died. Although he was 91 and it was his desire to go quietly before life got too painful and difficult, it is hard to let him go. But I take some solace from the thought that every month that moon will cycle around, and I will have him in my heart again. And it will all end well.

I want to describe for you the picture I get in my mind everytime I see that banana moon: It's of Grandpa Bill (who self-imposed the nickname 'Wild Bill' on himself) sitting on his patio in Naples, Florida. He's wearing a pink polo shirt and some snazzy pants that feature yellow and lime green stripes. In his right hand he's gently swirling the ice in his glass of scotch. His left hand is in the peanut dish, squirrling out a few nuts. He's looking into the middle distance with a twinkle in his eye. He says, "Grettie, did I ever tell you about the time Bud and I...."