Full Moon

We were standing on a dirt road looking into the night sky. There were crackles coming from fires and the sound of a motorbike far off, but other than that, the night sky held the only lights. This village of a few hundred families scattered between rice fields and trees had yet to get electricity. It took me back to the week I spent with my brother in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area days before leaving for Asia. There we had slipped the canoe into the night waters and drifted into the lake under stars. Now I stood with other college students and some girls from the center where we were staying. One girl, Iritoo, who took Joy for her English name, asked me if I could see the rabbit in the moon. The rabbit? Isn't it a man in the moon? She showed me ears, a tail, a body. I could see nothing but the bulging eyes and mouth of the man. From where we stood in Thailand, the man was cocking his head as if to say, "really, now?" When the rabbit finally came to me, it was like looking at one of those 3-D images from the '80's where at first glance it was a picture of colorful lines and then an airplane or farm scene popped out at you, only to disappear if you looked at it too long. They were a hit at the mall kiosks. Joy got a kick out of my reaction and so named me "Dai", short for "Kradai" or rabbit in Thai. The name stuck. When I returned to teach a few years later, my Thai name remained, Dai.

Tonight the moon is full again, flooding the frigid air with a burst of light. Somewhere across the globe it was studied last night and maybe someone else saw the rabbit for the first time.