My mother, the Luna Moth

& the sacred art of noticing on what would have been my mother's 71st birthday

On April 16th, my ma would have turned 71. She died on June 3rd, 2023, just weeks after after turning 69. Days later, a thick cloud of smoke descended on the entire northeast. It was hard to breathe. You could almost taste the embers.

Ma was a fiery Aries. The dramatic exit is so fitting.

A week later, I was waiting in line at the Starbucks drive thru when I saw it—a Luna moth clinging to the underside of the leaves of a rhododendron bush.

The first time I saw a Luna moth was in the late spring of 2021, I’d just moved to the woods of Orange County, New York a few months before and had stepped out of the house to go I don’t know where, and there it was, dead, on the ground right outside the driver’s side of my jeep. I was startled by its bright colors—lime green, with a dark leading edge on the forewings. I picked it up gently and placed it between the pages of a journal, where it lay for months until this day in June after my mother died. That’s when I finally opened that journal again and taped the moth onto a page to preserve it.

So I knew it was a Luna moth when I saw the glowing green and its long, tapering tails, from my driver’s seat in that drive thru. I was with my cousin who didn’t see it until I got out of the car (I had to!) to point it out and, of course, to take pictures. (No moths were harmed in this mini-photo shoot.)

I knew a luna moth visit after my mother’s death meant something. I knew because I’d learned about spirit and nature when I was a four year old baby in ma’s backyard garden in Bushwick. And of course, I’d also read up on the Luna moth when I first saw that dead one in front of my car.

Luna Moths are not rare, but are rarely seen by humans because their adult lives only last 7-10 days and they only fly at night. The reason that moth was where it was—clinging to leaves of a bush in a strip mall—is likely because it was at the end of its life cycle and was running out of energy to fly.

Across cultures, the Luna moth symbolizes rebirth, change, transformation, resurrection, and the power of regeneration. In some cultures, it is said that If you see one when the sun is still up, you should consider yourself lucky as spotting one during day time is believed to be an indicator of luck.

What I know is that when I think of those days after ma died, I remember that moth.

I think of my cousin who is the reason we were even in that drive thru—she’d asked me to take her to get an iced matcha latte. When I gasped (I am a gasper. I always gasp) and pointed at the moth, she turned to me wide-eyed, said: “How did you even see that?”

I am that person who sees things in nature that often other people don’t see. Last spring I saw two large snapping turtles mating in a pond near my home. I was on one of my miles long walk/hikes through town and stopped to marvel at the signs of spring, my favorite season—the blossoms in the trees, the green growing around that pond on the edge of the road—and that’s when I saw the aggressive mating dance. A passerby also on a workout walk slowed down to follow my eyes. I pointed, said, “Look, the turtles are mating.” She watched, wide-eyed, said: “How did you see that?”

I said: I pay attention. I wanted to say: how could you miss it?

I once saw a hummingbird in Inwood Hill Park. It was the summer of 2013, when my brother, my Superman Juan Carlos, died. Carlos had been coming to me thru hummingbirds for weeks (he still does)—in Berkeley, starting the morning he died and throughout the entire week of my trip, later in the airport on a t-shirt, on a painting in the street, a pair of earrings gifted to me that I still wear... But this was the first time I ever saw an actual hummingbird in NYC. When I mentioned it to someone, they insisted that I didn’t see what I saw. “It must have been another small bird, a sparrow or finch. There are no hummingbirds in NYC.” The seed of doubt was planted.

I googled it, thinking, knowing: I’m not buggin. I know what I saw. There’s no mistaking a hummingbird for anything else. They’re that distinctive. But yeah, I was right, and this would be confirmed for me when I moved to Riverdale where hummingbirds visited my deck garden pretty regularly. Where I live in the Hudson valley, they visit my feeders several times a day in the warm weather months.

What I’m saying is that I am adept at the sacred act of noticing..and I learned this first in my mother’s garden.

It’s only recently gotten warm enough to sit outside. Yesterday, my not so little pup, a nine month pit bull terrier, Hutch, was taken by the song of a Carolina wren.

the sacred act of noticing.

Later, I was sitting out front with my wife when we heard it: a pair of owls making a ruckus in the forest behind our house. It’s called caterwauling and it’s part of their mating dance. Imagine it: two owls calling back and forth with hoots, cackles and caws. It’s beautiful. I love it here. I captured pictures and videos of a pair (perhaps the same pair?) last year, but I can’t seem to find it right now. (insert sad face)

A Phoebe couple has again built their nest under the deck stairs. Last year, a predator, likely a raccoon, got to their five eggs and knocked down the nest. The nest was up again a few days later. They have built and rebuilt that nest so many times over I don’t know how many years. We moved here in February of 2021. The nest was already there.

Is it the same Phoebe couple, I can’t say. I like to think so. I can’t count how many times over the years I’ve witnessed their babies grow from egg to bald chick with their always open, hungry for food, to the moment they fly off from the nest for the first time.

the sacred act of noticing

In that garden oasis, my mother introduced me to another mother who would love me when she, the woman who birthed me, couldn’t. Did she know that she was also teaching me how to survive her? I like to think so.

Happy birthday, Edenia. Me haces falta…

Let’s write about our mothers on May 3rd. Writing the Mother Wound. the Mother’s Day edition.