Under the Nashi Moon
On the coldest morning of January, my mother appears at my door. I had been sick with a cold and cough for four days, and her brow crinkles with worry.
“Here,” she says, shoving a plastic sack from her favorite Asian market into my hands. “This is for you.”
The plastic crinkles as I pull out a large Japanese pear sheathed in white foam webbing. Rounded and heavy, the nashi gleams gold and green through the soft netting.
As my mother holds open the screen door, a frigid gust whips around her. I stand aside to let her in, but she shakes her head. She gestures to the nashi in my hand, her index finger bulging with arthritis.
“That,” she says, “is for you, only for you.”
“Thank you,” I call, as she rushes back to her car.
*
As I cradle the nashi to my chest, I recall my eleven-year-old self watching the full moon shine through the kitchen window of my childhood home.
In memory, my mother stands across from me. She leans on the kitchen counter with a knife and nashi in her hand. Moonlight glints off the blade, pear crackling as its thick skin pulls away to reveal luminous flesh. My mother slices away four gleaming crescents, nicking pith and core out with a flick of the blade. Fanning out the pear onto a porcelain plate, she slides it in front of me.
The nashi slices glisten, pale as moonlight. I bite into the cool slice, my incisors tingling. The nashi’s gritty flesh crunches, releasing a surge of nectar. I cram my mouth full, juice trickling down my chin.
In minutes, the pear is gone. I look up from the empty plate to meet my mother’s dark flinty eyes. She looks at me and shakes her head.
I lower my eyes. I had not offered her a slice. Her silent disappointment is enough to curdle my stomach. Shame swirls within my gut.
*
Shutting the front door, I carry the nashi into my dining room and set in on the oak table. Still encased in its webbing, the pear’s reflection glows off the wood’s polished surface.
Ten years ago, my mother and I had sat side by side at her kitchen table, watching the waning moon gleam through the window. She turned a steaming cup of genmaicha in her hands, its fragrance wafting with the steam.
“You know,” she said, “when you were growing up, I never made room for myself.”
Bitterness rushed into my mouth as I gazed at my mother’s hands pocked with oil burns, seamed with scars from searing-hot pans. I remembered sweetness whisking across the counter into my waiting hands. How my mouth had bulged, how in my childish greed, I had forgotten my mother.
My mother’s eyes moistened. Her lips lifted in a wavering smile. “Now that you are a mother,” she said, “keep that room for yourself.”
*
Now, it is midnight, hours after my mother had left my house. After a coughing fit, I am unable to sleep. I tip-toe though the hallway past the room where my eleven-year-old son turns in his dreams.
Moonlight eases through the parted dining room curtains. On the polished surface of the oak table, the nashi glows within its pale shroud. My empty stomach rumbles and I moisten my parched lips with my swollen tongue. I cup the rounded fruit in my hands and unsheathe it. Roughness rasps against my skin as I turn the nashi over and over.
I pick up a knife, but hesitate. I think of my son’s love of pears and how his dark eyes close in delight as he devours slice after slice. But I also recall how each time he holds out his hand and begs for more, I surrender all of my portions.
My mother’s heart and mine are the same, formed by a lineage of women who gave and gave until nothing remained. She knew me too well and wanted a different life for me. Her words resounded in my mind, braiding into a command, a plea: Make room for you, only for you.
I ease the blade into crackling green-gold skin, releasing a spray of nectar. I divide the fruit into fours, and arrange them on a white porcelain plate. Under the moonlight, I take a crescent into my mouth: a bite for me, a bite for my mother. Together in spirit, we savor sweetness under the blooming moon.
Sayuri Matsuura Ayers is a Chinese Japanese American essayist and poet. The author of three poetry chapbooks and one nonfiction chapbook, her work appears in TriQuarterly, Joyland, Hippocampus Magazine, and Gulf Stream Magazine. Ayers’ creative work has been a finalist for the 2025 Creative Capital Award and 2024 The deGroot Foundation’s COURAGE to WRITE Grant. She has been supported by Yaddo, The Virginia Center for Creative Arts, The Ohio Arts Council, and The Greater Columbus Arts Council. Ayers earned her MFA in creative nonfiction from Randolph College as a Blackburn Fellow.
