Outrun the Moon

by Stacey Lee

Mrs. Lowry says a good businesswoman should always leave with a smile, even when her company looks fit to spit.

Mrs. Lowry’s book gave me the answer. It wasn’t just a book on how to run a business; it was a philosophy. She said that your circumstances don’t determine where you can go, only your starting point.

“You may no longer be in school, but you must never stop learning.

“I think jade needs polishing before it can become useful.” His eyes flit around while he thinks, and then he shakes his head. “Too much polishing risks cracking, and then it becomes useless.”

“It is like the moon. We can see it differently by climbing a mountain, but we cannot outrun it. As it should be.”

I don’t believe in fate or destiny, but somehow I will change ours for the better. Even my inauspicious Ma’s. I simply must catch the phoenix feather.

Father is always calling Ma a cricket because those insects don’t have ears and she never listens to him. Ma says that crickets do have ears, they just listen a different way.

I told him you can’t force a kumquat tree to make pears. You must help it make the best kumquats it can make.” “I am the kumquat?” “No, you are the tree. Now go on, and make some good fruits.”

Ba took me to pan for gold on the American River. An hour passed, and we still hadn’t found a flake, so I threw my pan. Ba patiently retrieved it and put it back in my hands. “Sometimes you have to throw out lots of sand to find your nugget. But you’ll never find it if you stop shaking.” Headmistress Crouch is simply another pan of sand, and I must keep shaking.

you cannot control the wind, but you can control your sails.

Ma says a thoughtful person makes a better friend than a person full of thoughts.

I sit on my worries, like fidgeting hands.

Ma says peace lilies are good plants to have in one’s home because they neutralize any negative energy.

The poor man, whose intentions were so quickly imagined for him because of the way the light hits his skin.

The stars wink, teasing me with the notion that this has all been some colossal joke. That I will wake up any second in the living room of our flat on Clay Street with the smell of pomelo in the air. But the universe never jokes. It is always profoundly, unflinchingly serious.

If I want to survive—not just the earthquake—I must march, swim, pull oars, and dig in. I mustn’t stay still.

That if I had a nickel for every time she rubbed me wrong, I could start a mint.

Mr. Mortimer was fond of saying that all cards return to the deck at some point—kings, queens, and even twos. He was talking about death, but it strikes me that catastrophes have the power to equalize us, just as well.

God willing, we will emerge from this park stronger for having gone through it.”

“The sooner a fish jumps back into the stream, the better its chances of living.”

Maybe sorrow and its opposite, happiness, are like dark and light. One can’t exist without the other. And those moments of overlap are like when the moon and the sun share the same sky.

Ma said, a clear mind starts with a swept porch.

Their deaths might leave a hole in our hearts as deep as the ocean, but it is only because we are deep as the ocean, and our capacity to love is as high as the sky. The earthquake took much from us. But there is much we can take from it as well.”

“Holy Nine Fruits of Mother Mary,

It matters not how many wrong turns you make, but that you keep moving. Eventually we’ll find our way out, given enough time.

“We have a saying that good friends never say ‘good-bye,’ only ‘see you again.’”

“Sometimes the only way to move forward is to be pushed by someone who cares,”