Sunshine & Moonlight

Looking back, it was a simple action. I saw it lying there under the paint-chipped bus seat, half concealed by a plastic bag. I didn’t even think of it as an act of kindness, but more of just the right thing to do. It wasn’t old or terribly worn, but I could tell it had been around. Little did I know just how many hands it would someday touch, and how many hearts. How many tears might fall down onto its weathering cover. I turned it over in my hands, hopeful that a name might be inside. When I opened it, I saw neat cursive scrawled over the first page.

“My name is Lucas Whitton. I have been traveling to meet my sister, whom I have never known in all my 98 years. I suppose I have met her, but I have never really known her. Let me explain. While sifting through my mother’s belongings, I came across an old photograph. I recognized myself as a baby, precariously perched on the shoulders of my father. As I held the photograph up, the sunlight streamed through the stained glass. I could see my mother’s handwriting on the back. “Cecil and Lucas, 1923”. I was born in ’23, so I must have been around 6 months old. The look on his face was so apparent: love. He was gazing in the direction of the camera, but just past it, as if into the soul of the photographer. I tapped twice on the tattered photo and placed it into my lap. I dug through the leather chest containing the last known remnants of my beloved mother. A second photo. This time it was a face I knew all too well. Her beauty seemed to radiate through the photo. It sent a shiver down my spine, for one outstretched arm was holding the camera, and the other was cradling a sleeping child. It looked like me, except she was wearing a little bow in her hair. I squeezed my eyes shut; my face felt hot. I didn’t know who this girl was that shared my features. On the back, it read “Lucy, 1923”.

Over the next decade, I made it my mission to fill in the gaps and find out who Lucy was, and how she fit into my life. I came to find out that my father had not run out on us, as my mom had once told me. When they divorced, they had made a mutual decision to each take a child and live their lives separately. I was able to track down Lucy, with the help of her granddaughter, Sarah. Lucy had grown up with our father, Cecil, 2 towns over. I always had a feeling that something was missing that I could never understand, until now. My other half was a mere 200 miles away, growing up without a mother and sharing the same feeling of incompleteness. After she was married in 1941 at the age of 18, she was re-located to Argentina where she remained. Our 200 miles grew to over 6,000. I began my travels on 15 March 2017, determined to make it from my hometown of San Diego to my sister’s home in Argentina. I have traveled primarily by bus and by the kindness of strangers along the Pan-American Highway. I am about to get off my first bus in Albuquerque.”

During my four-hour ride on the big grey bus, I read. I read stories about Lucas’ life, his childhood, his trials, and his search to find Lucy. It was a memoir. My eyes were transfixed as Lucas poured his hear out with the ink of his pen. It flowed so beautifully from one ivory page to the next like a weeping river. Lucas had felt more loss and hardship in his life than anyone I had ever known. He lost his mother to bone cancer at the age of twelve. At the age of 17 he was in a car wreck that claimed 2 of his friends and left his girlfriend paralyzed below the neck. He would spend the next 3 years with her in physical therapy. Then, they discovered a mass in her brain. They gave her 6 months to live; they were married the next day. After two blissful years, Lucas buried his beloved into the soft earth. He would visit her every month, bringing fresh gardenias and lilies. The lilies were her favorite, but the gardenias smelled of her. All of his remaining family had been taken from him and he lived much of his life with a lonesome longing in his heart. He knew something was missing, but didn’t know what until the day he found the photograph of Lucy.

Lucas detailed how he had first spoken to Lucy on the phone 6 months ago. Their lives were eerily similar. She too had been in a car wreck, lost family and friends, and a husband as well. She too was alone. But now, each of them had a family member in their life that they always longed for, but never knew existed. They were twins; mind, body, and soul. Lucy’s doctor would not allow her to travel back to the Untied States in her state of health. Therefore, Lucas decided he would be the one to finally bring them together. They were each other’s only remaining relative.

On the last page, it said “Lucy” and listed an address in El Calafate, Argentina.

I was traveling from Texas to Ushuaia, also known as the “end of the world” because it is famously the southernmost City in the world. I had been traveling for the better part of 2 years, working my way around the world. I didn’t have a lot of money, so I would hitch rides, hike, or stay in a location and find odd jobs to pay for my next adventure. You see, I too was on a life journey. I too had known tragedy. Three years before, I was married to man who I thought I knew. We had 2 wonderful children who were my entire world. Tezlynn and Raven; I called them my sunshine and my moonlight. My husband was a different story. He thrived on deception and manipulation and made every day more difficult than the last. All I wanted was a simple life where I could raise my children and for us to be happy. I knew that I couldn’t stay with him and allow him to continue the cycle of abuse. I gave him divorce papers and told him that the kids are I were moving away to be with my family. The first morning of my new life, I awoke to a deafening silence. I was glad I didn’t have to tiptoe past him, and I went into the kitchen to make breakfast. When my kids didn’t come out, I made my way down the hall to their bedroom and slowly turned the bronze knob. Empty. Their beds were empty. Panic set in and the world came to a halt while I searched the house, then the neighborhood, then called everyone I knew. They were nowhere to be found. I called the police who came right away and found a note that had floated down onto the bathroom tile.

“I want you to suffer. You will never see them again.” –Darren

I think I may have blacked out at that point, because the next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital bed. My mom was by my side. She told me that I had fainted and hit my head pretty hard on that same tile where Darren had left the note that ended my dream of my new life. I spent the next year searching everywhere for my children, turning over every rock and exhausting every resource. I had fallen into a major depression. My mom suggested that I take a trip to clear my head. To try and ease my mind, she said that she would never stop searching for my sunshine and my moonlight. Now, here I am. On this bus with another person’s life story in my hands.

I knew what I had to do. I had to go to El Calafate to find Lucy and return Lucas’s memoir. When I tracked them down, they were together in the hospital. Side by side, holding hands and sharing their last smiles and laughs together, as twin souls should.

“Excuse me, Mr. Whitton, but I believe that this is yours.” His weary eyes moved toward me and instantly lit up at the sight of his little black book. He thought it had been lost forever, but here it was in my hands. “You have traveled all this way to give a dying man his notebook?” “Yes, sir. And I hope you don’t mind, but it was beautifully written. And I would know, because I used to work for a publishing company.” They asked me to stay with them and tell them my story, and so I did. We sat for hours talking, laughing, and crying together. Lucas looked into Lucy’s eyes for a long time. She smiled and nodded at him. “I want you to have this….please.” Lucas placed a small piece of paper in my hands. “Go find your children and begin again” he said.

The paper had coordinates, which I followed to some densely packed dirt in the desert. I dug about 3 feet until my finger touched cold metal. I pulled the box out of the ground, closed my eyes, and opened it. I could not believe what I was staring at, there were stacks of $100 bills. I brought it back to my hotel and counted it. $20,000. I went back to Lucy’s home where Sarah told me that she and Lucas had taken their last breath together the night before, just after I left.

This was four years ago. I sit on my porch with the steam from my tea swirling into the eve and breathing in the crisp air. A published copy of Lucas’s memoir, called “The Little Black Book,” was laying on my lap. My husband John comes out with a smile on his face. “Lucas and Lucy are finally asleep in their cribs” he says.

It’s twilight, as he joins me on the porch swing. We watch hand in hand as my sunshine and my moonlight dance and play in the grass, giggling below the stars.