Rabbit Moon: A Flood Of Beauty

La Chascona

Can you see it? The rabbit on the moon?

This weekend I'm celebrating 10 years married to the most beautiful woman I could have ever imagined being with. We've actually known each other for 15 years, but it took me a while to get around to popping the question. Coming from different cultures, we both wanted to be sure. You know, it's for life, electric word life, and that's mighty long time, as Prince put it.


For me, it was love at first sight. It was a September evening in 1995, the setting - Nakano - a smallish town in the mountains of Japan. I was one of three Caucasians among a population of about 40,000 and had just been posted two months before to teach English at a local high school. Yuko had graduated the previous year from the same school and knew some of my new colleagues. She was a college student at the time, studying English and tutoring on the side. Unbeknownst to me, she made arrangements with her old class teacher for a little dinner party to take place at my tiny apato...


She showed up at my door carrying a huge platter of delicious Japanese food, along with two of her friends. She blew me away - her beautiful smile, exuberance, generosity and genuine wit. We quickly became friends and that's all we were for the next three months, much to my disappointment. She was already in a relationship so I did my best to remain relevant while surreptitiously doing what I needed to do...to make a long story short, she dumped him and by Christmas we were together (our first "proper" date was actually on Christmas Eve).

Before I met Yuko I thought the moon was made of cheese. She showed my there's a little more to it than that. In fact, there's a rabbit up there and you can see it if you look for it, but I never even knew to look before. Yuko also happens to have been born in the year of the rabbit, so she's got an insider's perspective on these things. She points out the magic, reminds me of the splendor and beauty of life when it disappears down a hole or decides to play hooky. I'm grateful for all her love and for helping me to see the "tsukiyo no usagi" - the rabbit on the moon. So here's to another 10 plus years together, my sweet companion on the road.



This is a song by one of my favourite Canadian poets - Leonard Cohen - based on a poem by another favourite poet - Federico García Lorca. "Take This Waltz" includes the immortal line: "I'll yield to the flood of your beauty", something I've had no choice but to do since the day I met Yuko...