By Trina Kleist
Lisa Moon was trying to put one foot in front of the other, going up a step. “I could visualize it, but I couldn’t do it!” A stroke a few weeks earlier had left the well-known local doctor without balance and her brain-body connection shredded. The physical therapist standing behind Moon picked her up by her belt, put his foot under hers, and moved her forward.
“To me, the best part of me is my brain,” Moon says. And in August of 2016, her brain was wounded. So Moon applied the same determination and perseverance she has exerted against all the other challenges she has faced throughout her life.
“It’s just the thing I want to do,” says the Banner Mountain resident, now 69. “I want to get better. I want to win. I want to do the best that I can.”
That drive has left its mark on Nevada County. In 1978, Moon and her husband, Gerald Chan, started what is now Chan Family Optometry in Grass Valley (now owned by their daughter, Tiffany Chan). Moon was the founding president and artistic director of Community Asian Theater of the Sierra, and she’s a formidable contender at the Nevada County Fair. Born in Massachusetts (where her dad attended Harvard University) and raised in San Francisco, Moon possesses a love of learning and a drive for excellence instilled by her parents, who worked hard, held high ideals, broke through barriers and earned recognition for their accomplishments
So Moon wasn’t going to let a stroke best her. After three weeks in the hospital and three more in rehabilitation, Moon walked to the car for her ride home. Her husband wept.
“They said to me, ‘Do you want us to wheel you out in a wheelchair?’ I said, ‘No! I came here by ambulance. I’m going to walk out of here!’”
Vision For Helping Others
That passion fuels compassion for others.
Early in Moon’s optometry career, a man wearing shabby clothes arrived at her practice through a program assisting low-income people. Having examined the man’s vision earlier, Moon carefully fitted him with glasses and watched as he reunited with his scruffy dog outside. The man looked up, took off the glasses, put them back on, took them off again, put them back on again. His mouth moved, as if saying to his dog, “I can see!” Moon declares, acting out the scene. “Sight is so important!”
The moment brought into focus the values of her life.
“I just want the things that I do to reflect who I am and for it to show that I believe in quality and excellence,” Moon continues.” “I believe in treating people well. Like my patients. I think of them as family and friends.”
Blue-ribbon Baking
“Don’t touch my cheesecake!”
Moon was shouting at the Transportation Security Agency checkpoint in the Sacramento airport, desperate to avert disaster: Moon had taken her creation out of its cooler bag. The springform pan that held the mushroom-thyme delight couldn’t go through the scanner, so the security agent wanted to get a closer look.
Moon was on her way to Los Angeles for an audition with the PBS hit, “The Great British Baking Show.” The tryout required a savory cheesecake; Moon had never heard of such a thing, but she had done her research. She wasn’t about to have her ticket to the big time spoiled by a perfunctory search for a knife or a file.
Moon and cheesecake made it to the audition and impressed the judges enough to get to the final round. But exhausted by a sleepless night before, Moon got no farther.
That’s OK. Moon is still a superstar at the Nevada County Fair, where she has won sweepstakes in the baked goods division and probably a hundred blue ribbons over the decades. Peach-almond cake. Low-fat banana bread. Cake pops shaped like sheep and dipped in white chocolate. Looking back, Moon’s only regret about not making it onto the PBS show was missing out on the constructive criticism of the showtime judges. Of the county fair, Moon says, “Wow! Comments from the judges on the back of the card!”
Another perk of baking is sharing her creations with the people she loves. And, while mixing and shaping cookie dough is a delicious sensory exercise, it also abets another passion: Too busy and too antsy to sit with a book very often, the avid reader now opens up an audio tome while mixing the muffins.
Cats: Creativity, Culture, Community
Moon blames her theatrical passion on her husband.
When Jerry Chan was in 5th grade, like many local boys, he took lessons at Nelda & Lennie’s Dance Studio, in downtown Grass Valley near the old Greyhound Bus station (now the site of the Gold Miners Inn). So when Moon and Chan’s older daughter Allison was small, the energetic tyke went there too.
Nelda demanded that papa Chan get in there with the 2- and 3-year-olds and join in the pliés, Moon recalls. Soon, little Tiffany came along, and Nelda recruited the whole family to help in her annual production of Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker” for her Gold Country Productions. They played the mandarins for “Chinese Dance,” and Allison and Tiffany portrayed dancing marshmallows that hid under Mother Marshmallow’s skirt. As the girls grew into gymnastics, they became mice, other animals and eventually the Mouse King, and mama Moon stitched their costumes. “We were considered the Chan family dancers,” Moon says. “The applause… We got hooked on that.”For a production of John Patrick’s “Tea House of the August Moon,” Lisa Moon recruited her Asian friends to participate. That experience wove into a larger mission to bring greater diversity to foothills theater and remind residents of the key roles played by Asian immigrants in the gold fields, railroad construction, commerce and broader society. Eventually, in 1994, passion and mission birthed Community Asian Theater of the Sierra. Moon remains the artistic director.
“We wanted to give Asian actors a chance on stage,” Moon recalls. The group also educates through events, including a cooking show that starred Moon, mahjong workshops, Mandarin classes, excursions to historical sites and tea ceremonies. Every project provides a teaching opportunity for the community own family.
“My kids are Chinese, and they are learning so much from all the plays we do,” Moon says. “A lot of people didn’t know about the internment, so by watching the plays (such as “Snow Falling on Cedars” in 2011), they learn about it. It’s something for the teachers to talk about.”
Living by Example
Moon’s brain worked for nearly three years to memorize her lines for CATS’ 2022 production, Susan Kim’s “The Joy Luck Club.” The show was derailed twice by the novel coronavirus.
In the wrenching story, Moon portrayed one of four Chinese-born mothers in a cultural wrestling match with their American-born daughters. Her aim: Learn to speak English with a Chinese accent. As a child, she had learned it from her Hong Kong-born mother, but later forgot.
“Now I want it back for this character,” Moon said after a rehearsal. “That would make the character more authentic.”
“If I can do it,” Moon says, “you can do it.”
Lisa Moon
Theater is also a lot of fun, she says, where the camaraderie and shared mission keep her going. They all buoy each other. So Moon pushed to keep her lines fresh in her brain, encouraging her companions as they push forward together.
Community Asian Theater of the Sierra
Theater, cultural events, language classes and more.
CATSweb.org
