I was born on the night of a full moon. It was a large silver moon that lit up the night sky, and that’s why my mother called me Silvia. Silver moon. But Luna was the nickname she gave me, and it became the name she most often used. You’re my little light in the night, she’d say. My light in the dark. My Luna.
My mother, Alma, was originally from the city of Tromsø in Norway, but she went to live in London for her student years. She studied for a masters in applied ecology and conservation and spent a lot of time in Mexico, concentrating on forest conservation projects near and around Veracruz. That’s where she first met my father.
My mother was an intelligent woman. She was like a walking encyclopaedia. But it wasn’t just knowledge that she had – words, dates, figures and concepts – above all, I remember her for both her wisdom and her lack of it when it came to my father.
She was disillusioned with humanity. She’d spent years of her life studying theories of ecology, and the more she read, the more she became convinced of the absurdity of our species.
How had saving the planet even become an issue? How did it get to that? How had humans managed to become so removed in the first place? She used to say these things when she got particularly annoyed at something, and I used to shrug, because I was young and I didn’t understand what she meant. She used to talk to me a lot, because Diego, my dad, wasn’t always there for her. And I used to go with her everywhere because there was no one else to look after me. She used to say to me that she felt stuck, that she didn’t know how to make a difference. But she wanted to. She said, sometimes she felt the only way to make the proper urgent change that was needed would be through a radical revolution, a massive upheaval. But it seems too confrontational, she would say. It’s like fighting fire with fire. Then she would add, but maybe I only think like that because I’m from such a damn comfortable middle class background. I was taught to always be polite, to hold everything in, follow all the rules. And I could convince myself till eternity that we can fix all this without a massive confrontation, by just politely asking everyone to do the ‘right thing’. Meanwhile the world is dying around me even more. I’d shrug. But you know Luna, sometimes I feel I just want to run away from all this, go live in the wilderness somewhere, and make my own food, live simply, sustain myself – that way I wouldn’t be causing any more damage. And some say that’s the way. But then I’d be removing myself from society and I wouldn’t be able to influence change in a bigger way. But maybe it’s not about that… Ay Luna, I just don’t know! And I didn’t know either. I just listened to her, nodded, shrugged, and thought my mother was the cleverest and most beautiful mother in the world.
Sometimes, while she talked and talked, I would sit and draw her talking and talking. As her mouth opened and closed I sometimes imagined she was the little tweeting bird that sat outside my window and sung to me in the mornings.
The problem, for her, was that she felt powerless. Her life in Mexico restricted her, she would say. But did she leave Mexico to pursue those things she said she really wanted to do? No.
I don’t know what I would do if I wasn’t here Luna, but I don’t think there’s much potential for me here. I don’t feel I can make much of an impact. I don’t know what kind of dreams she had in her head, where it was that she imagined things would be different, and how they’d be different and what she would do. Where would things be better? I don’t know if those dreams were ever properly formulated in her head, either. She’d probably feel just as unfulfilled anywhere else, and maybe deep down that’s also what made her sad. But I think the biggest issue for her was that she felt like an outsider, she stuck out with her height, light ash blonde hair and blue eyes – how glad she was that I had been born with dark hair! She was the gringa, and maybe that frustrated her too. It made her self-conscious.
All I knew was that she loved Diego too much to ever leave. ‘Love’. That word. I didn’t understand it, what humans meant when they said it.
She worked for an environmental charity, but was unsatisfied with her job there – saying that she spent more time staring at pointless spreadsheets on a computer screen than actually making any kind of notable difference in the world. I used to imagine her head turning into a computer. On the side she worked on some translation projects to make ends meet, and to afford rare trips back to Norway to see her mother. My grandma was a woman of poor health who spent her last years in a hospice, and who was the only family my mother had left.
My mother was also deeply involved in local and national grassroots projects. For example, when an overseas company decided it could move into an apparently empty space without warning, clear land and mine for gold, or oil, she and her compañeros stood up to them. There were lots of different movements, and she made sure she was informed by as many of them as possible. Involving herself with these movements was, at the time, she said, one of the best things she felt she could do. It gave her a reason to travel around the country too, taking me with her. I remember she once whispered to me, this is a beautiful country Luna, as though it was our secret.
As time went by, she started to make a name for herself and gained the respect of locals and environmentalists from all over Mexico. And that in itself was a vital thing for her, and definitely contributed to her growing confidence. She didn’t feel like just a gringa anymore.
Diego wasn’t at all like my mother. Or at least I didn’t see all of the wonderful things she saw in him. You’d have to be me to understand, she said. But I wasn’t her, and I didn’t understand. He was from Culiacán, in the state of Sinaloa, and I spent a lot of my early childhood round there. He knew people in the notorious local drug cartel and, to some, his involvement seemed a grey area. My mother kept well out of that world. I didn’t know much about it either, I only heard rumours. And I didn’t really know so much about my dad. I didn’t see him that often. When I did he was drunk or high. I don’t know exactly what happened or why but I know he hit her on more than one occasion. She blamed herself, saying she travelled around too much for his liking. But the truth was that he was around much less, and sometimes he didn’t even tell us where he was going. I know that each time he went my mother wondered if he would come back. He’d hurt her and make her cry, and then she’d tell me she loved him. It was different before, said my mother. Your dad’s a good person Luna. Was she trying to convince me or herself with those words? He used to be different, but it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t change a thing, he’s still a good person. He’s had it tough, and sadness changes people. Her words hurt me, because I knew she was hurting herself with them. She was lying to herself, and she believed her own lies. But love is blind.
I wanted never to be blind.
It used to be different, she said. But I’d never know what she meant by that.