as the son of an ambassador i was carted around to so many incredible places i practically built up an immunity to being impressed / by the time i was seven years old i’d been to so many mosques / palaces / shrines / caves and mountaintops / the idea of going to marrakesh to see the fleur de lune meant virtually nothing to me
it was an all male expedition for some reason / the ambassador from morroco and his enterage / my father and his enterage and i paddled up a north african river in a sweltering heat / our heads wrapped tight in handkerchiefs soaking up pools of sweat / shielding us from an unrelenting sun / it must have been at least one hundred and ten degrees in the sun / damn it was hot / every hour or so we’d stop to rest under the shade of the occasional bamboo tree that spotted the riverbank / being a restless little kid i’d wander off to explore the arid desert that lay just beyond the edge of the river / but there was nothing to see but endless stretches of barren sand
after about a half day’s journey canoeing up the river / one of the marrakeshi men said to my father this is it / this is it / we’re here / i looked around to see what he was talking about / there was nothing but desert! / we carried our gear for a few miles further inland until we came to a spot with millions of dark colorless stems sticking out of the vast expanse of sun / i couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about / of all the places i’d been dragged to this was by far the biggest disappointment / there i was surrounded by grown-ups / stuck in the middle of a major nonwonder of the world
when night came (around six or seven) the sun set / the sky darkened / and then underneath the glow of a full moon / the whole desert opened up into a vast field of huge / huge white flowers / it was such a glorious sight / without thinking i ran from the tent headlong into the blanket of white flowers / each flower was so gigantic my seven-year-old hand couldn’t even reach the tips of the open petals / i jumped for joy inside that fragrant field of white / then walked back to the tent and stood there flabbergasted at the endless web of flowers stretching for miles and miles before my eyes
after about two hours or so the flowers started to turn back down in the direction of the earth / the stems weakened / and with some help from the blowing wind / the flowers slowly closed their petals / the next day when we woke up all the flowers were completely closed / i asked my father if we could stay another night to see the flowers open up again / this man they called my father (whoever he was) lifted me onto his lap and told me that the fleur de lune (the moon flower) wouldn’t open for another year / only once a year does the fleur de lune open its petals to the light of the full moon / then he proceeded to give me my vocabulary word for the day / i have to give him credit for that / this man / this so-called father of mine never read me bedtime stories / never! / but almost every night before i went to sleep he would put me on his knees and teach me a word or expression that had something to do with an experience i had earlier in the day / there in the middle of that north african desert / early that morning / my father taught me a vocabulary word that i’d never ever forget / he looked at me and said / well claude / today you learned about éphémère / éphémère is a word that means something that does not last for very long / life he said /is full of experiences / and many of them are cruel or unjust or simply don’t make any sense at all / but the happiest experiences are usually éphémère / the most beautiful things in life don’t last / in fact they’re very short-lived / so whenever you encounter a happy or beautiful experience / you must enjoy it / you must savor every morsel of it / because if it is good / it cannot last for very long / that was the lesson i got from my father as a little boy from the experience of the moon flower / a lesson that has stuck with me ever since
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