Realizing your parents fucked up: a book review of Earth to Moon

Earth to Moon, Moon Unit Zappa

I love a celebrity memoir, especially from a random or obscure celebrity. They capture the heartbreak of being human, but cameos from Andy Warhol or Cher give it just enough sparkle to keep going on. If you've heard of Moon Zappa, you likely know her because of her famous father, Frank Zappa, who was an experimental musical genius who pioneered naming his kids the kinds of "celebrity kid names" we take for granted today, like Dweezil and Diva. Moon herself had the quirky hit "Valley Girl" with her dad in 1982. She's written an excellent memoir of a sensitive kid who quickly learns how to meet the needs of the adults around her - and what are the consequences of that experience.

The book is written in present tense, as if she's narrating everything as it happens, but she holds the dual perspective of child and adult -- pointing toward the moments where you would hear the spooky soundtrack music kick in, but staying in the awareness of what she would have known as a kid. Here's an passage from early childhood about her mother:

Then Gail gives me a birthday card. It has a drawing by one of our favorite illustrators, Sandra Boynton, of a mischievous-looking monster. On the outside, the monster on the card says: "You can have any wish you want granted on one condition..." I flip to the inside: "....you must never open this card."

I blush with embarrassment at having been tricked. I feel stung. I look up at Gail. Her face is frozen with hyena-like glee. I stare back with puzzlement. I hate this card, but something inside of me tells me to save it anyway. I tuck in my new journal as a reminder to myself.

But of what?

Moon vividly brings us into the experience of growing up with parents who don't really see her. Her function is to meet their needs. "Even though Gail and Frank have presented this as giving me the grown-up choice to keep playing harp or not, I do not think that is fair or very nice because I am not a grown up and I know my real job here is to search my parents' faces and guess the right answer." Even her name, Moon Unit, points to her function for her parents -- they see her as making them a real family unit. Her mother uses her name as a taunt repeatedly, saying "Earth to Moon" to point out to her that Gail thinks she's stupid and clueless.

The household revolves around her father, who seems to have mostly holed up in his basement studio when at home. Everything must support his genius, even as her mother Gail seethes over the constant groupies and philandering. Frank is mostly absent, even when at home, and Gail rules over everyone in the service of Frank's creative work. Moon quickly learns to be her mother's emotional support, but also takes the brunt of her mother's anger. She describes Gail as her "first bully." While Hollywood and the music industry make for an exotic setting, sadly being invisible and learning to always look toward what your caregivers need from you is a mundane experience.

When Moon manages to get her father's attention and record "Valley Girl" with him when she was fourteen, it becomes his biggest hit, but it doesn't really bring her the closeness she's hoping for. Her father resents that a "novelty hit" represents his legacy to the world, instead of his more experimental work. Gail resents Moon's connection to her father, and undermines her budding creative work by telling her "improvisation isn't writing." Meanwhile, Moon was dutifully doing the talk show circuit to promote the song and the image of her bohemian genius father. Moon writes, "I try to hold the paradox of being told at home by the nearest and dearest to my heart that my contribution means nothing while the world sees me as clever and funny and talented."

Much of the book revolves around Moon's relationship to her mother. As the oldest child, Moon takes on the role of caring for her youngest sibling Diva, and she also is the one expert at reading Gail and preemptively managing her moods. As a teenager Moon had pretty severe acne and she was terribly self conscious about it. When one of her father's girlfriends sends her some fancy skincare products, she's torn between using them and getting her wish for clearer skin, or allying with her mother against the girlfriend. "If I choose Gail, I unchoose myself... But then I remember my place and that my allegiance to Gail is more important than my concern for myself."

Moon has used the word narcissist to describe her parents, especially her mother. I want to be clear I am Definitely Not Diagnosing Someone, but the idea of narcissist parents and narcissism generally is popular these days, so I think it's worth looking a little bit at what it means to have a narcissistic parent and its impact on kids. For more narcissistically oriented people, relationships are more about what it can bring to them (status, acclaim, a particular image of themself) than the other person. Often when kids are smaller and tend to be more influenced by (and dependent on) their caregivers, they are better able to fit their parents' idea of who they should be, what role they should play for their parents. Relationships tend to be easier when children are younger. Kids are pretty sophisticated at identifying and meeting their parents' needs, even if the parents don't specifically articulate them. The child can often sense their parent's emptiness and ask themself, as Moon does, "Isn't my love enough? Why isn't my love filling her up? Why isn't my love enough?" This undermines a sense of self trust (in being able to see the truth of their family relationships) and of self worthiness.

As children grow older, they notice more and more of the disconnect between the role the parent takes on, and who they actually are -- if they can tolerate seeing their parents clearly. Moon writes, "another family thing I figured out all by myself is that if i succeed at something, my parents will take all the credit." Her accomplishments can only be a reflection of their greatness, the creative environment she was raised it.

Often the price of closeness is meeting the narcissistically oriented person's needs, no matter the cost to you personally. When Frank is dying of cancer, Gail tells Moon that she needs to sell her house. "You cost us two hundred thousand dollars to raise, so we need to sell your house to pay for your father's cancer treatments because he has no health insurance." Moon writes,

It never occurs to me that I can say no or that their predicament is theirs to solve. I do not react to the precise calculation of what it cost, in her mind, to raise her child, as if I were a pet or a side business that held no emotional connections. For her it is simply a given that I will and must comply.

As Moon grows up and begins to set boundaries with her mother, she is punished, mostly notably in her mother's handling of the family estate. A major narrative arc in the book is Moon not just recognizing the patterns of what is going on in her home, but allowing herself to truly know it.

The book also does a great job of showing how each sibling grows up in a different family, sometimes a wildly different one. Maybe the family had more or less resources when one kid was born versus another. Maybe a younger kid gets nurturing from the older ones, and it helps buffer what the adults can't give. Maybe one kid strongly resembles another family members, and that affects how everyone treats them. One kid may simply have a lot more in common with one of their parents than their sibling does. There's a million reasons why siblings' experiences vary so much, and it's often a big source of pain. Ideally, siblings can validate each other's experiences and reality. In Moon's case, she comes to realize that not only did she and her siblings have different childhoods, but that her mother ultimately undermined them by the terms of her will and the control of her father's music, which favored her younger siblings over moon and her next brother Dweezil, and ultimately led to lawsuits and estrangements for them all. She seems to have come to a place of radical acceptance for where she is at with her siblings. Radical acceptance means accepting what is true right now -- not that she doesn't hope things will improve, but also not kidding herself about what is happening.

One of the things I appreciate most about this book is that it not only describes Moon's dysfunctional childhood, but it also details how she has healed from it (as much as we can "heal from it"). I'm always bummed when memoirs are almost entirely focused on the author's challenges, and then wrap up with half a page of "I went to therapy and things got better" because there's so much juiciness in the putting yourself back together part. I also love that Moon has a chapter titled "How to Heal in a Hundred Steps" because it's not just therapy, though she does do a lot of that. It's also reading tons of books, running, paddleboarding, laughing at The Office, dancing, guitar lessons, making soup, and many more steps. This is what we mean by "doing the work." Everyone's steps will differ, of course, but I love how clear she is that healing encompasses much more than showing up to therapy once a week. (And while there's sadly no "30 days to healing your trauma on every level!" guarantee that anyone can give you, the people I have seen who have gotten the results they want the quickest are those who take the "hundred steps" approach.) This is more than a fun, fluffy celebrity memoir - it's an impressive testament to one woman's awakening to the reality of her family, and how she rebuilt her life.