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The Moon in the Water
Reflections on an Aging Parent
In a series of moving vignettes, the author begins by describing a particular representation of Water-Moon Kuan Yin, a Buddhist teacher and goddess associated with compassion, who often sits on a precarious overhang or floats on a flimsy petal. Then Kuan Yin steps out of the frame to join the author in the mundane challenges of caring for her father-transferring his health insurance, struggling with a wheelchair van, managing adult diapers, or playing in the fictions of dementia. From perplexed to poignant to funny, the vignettes record the working-class English of a fading but still wise dad, and they find other human versions of Kuan Yin in a doctor who will still make house calls or kind strangers in the street.
The book includes ten illustrations: both classical representations of Kuan Yin and also the author's own drawings, which adapt Kuan Yin in an act of practical spirituality, reading art through life and life through art. Each vignette invites the harried caregiver to take a deep breath and meditate on the trials and joys of caring for an aging parent.
Kathy J. Phillips is Professor of English at the University of Hawai'i. Her most recent books are Manipulating Masculinity: War and Gender in Modern British and American Literature; This Isn't a Picture I'm Holding: Kuan Yin; and Virginia Woolf Against Empire.
...a story of a father and a daughter who give each other moments of great grace and beauty. It is a story told with the utmost care and love.
--Honolulu Weekly
Phillips spins an evocative account of the continual anguish punctuated by moments of wry humor and sublime love that characterize care for an aging parent. We walk with her through her five year-journey of caring for her ailing father, witnessing both the mind-numbing struggles of coping with a broken elder care system and the moments of grace in the unexpected generosity of friends and paid caregivers. Her father's dignity while dying by inches leaps from the page. This book will be a must-read both for my classes on Families and on Aging.
--Cameron L. Macdonald, University of Wisconsin, Madison
The Moon in the Water invites people in to the spiritual and practical dimensions of care-giving, especially to elderly parents. . . . This book is a welcome balm to those who seek sustenance on their own healing journey of caring.
Paula Arai, author of Women Living Zen: Japanese Soto Buddhist Nuns