A Day Moon

Sometimes you can see the moon above you even in the middle of the day – pale, wraith-like. It is always a strange thing. Like walking into the finest art museum, only to find they have decided overnight to turn the place into a low-budget Chinese buffet. It’s like seeing a world famous actress in the local deli across from your house.

Actually, the last part never really happens, unless you happen to live in Hollywood or something, I guess. But sometimes, you get lucky, and you’ll see minor celebrities. Or you just think that you see them. The other day I saw this beige sedan with vanity plates that said "Furlan" and I wondered it if was Mira Furlan – who was once on a show I loved passionately (and in fact, still do.)

I couldn’t pull up next to the car to tell for sure, though. But I was convinced at the time that it was really her. What she was doing there, I could not even begin to guess (which makes it rather more likely that it wasn’t actually her, but that’s not really the point.) I spent the next hour or so of our trip daydreaming about what it would be like to meet her.

Would I really want to meet the real person behind the character? To have all my illusions shattered?

That is truly the heartbreaking thing about celebrities: They are people too, and more like us than anyone would like. We get so in the habit of thinking that they are grander than ourselves that we want them to be that – to be what we cannot even be ourselves. Perfect.

So I guess I’m glad I never met her – that she, and more importantly the character I so admired, remain forever just a bit distant. Rather like the moon in the middle of the day.

My house is not 200 years old. It is not some grand mansion from an earlier day of glory. It is brick, one story, three bedrooms, one bath, with a kitchen so small it can hardly contain four comfortably. I believe it was built in the 1940’s, boom-town years, perhaps after the war.

When I was small, the kitchen was painted a sunny yellow. There was a divider between the kitchen and the living room, with shelves for knickknacks. My mother hated knickknacks.

The carpet in the living room was an orangish-brown, from previous owners. The walls were green. In the front door was a diamond-shaped cutout, with blue, pink and yellow abstract designs. I thought it was stained glass, but it was only a plastic privacy cover. My bedroom was pink. I hated pink.

When I was small, I believed my room was haunted. There were four ghosts – three gentlemen in old-fashioned clothes and Derby hats, who made fun of me and tormented me to no end. They were like the Three Stooges, and that is where I probably dreamed them up from.

And one lady ghost. She didn’t belong with them. She was wispy, clad in white, and so sad. Her hands were very motherly, more so than my own, almost. When I was about to cry, she would comfort me, making all the bad things go away, and she would sing to me.

Sometimes I think she is still there, when I catch a strange flash of white out of the corner of my eye. It is always when I am alone, late at night, and afraid of the dark – as if she wanted to tell me not to be scared, but knew I’d be even more frightened if I saw her now that I am all grown up.