Bon Voyage, Mom
By Jeanne Souldern
In the spring of 2001, I drove with my 9-year-old daughter, Abby, to Red Wing, Minnesota, my mom’s hometown nestled along the banks of the Mississippi River.
My mom and her three sisters grew up in a Lutheran children’s home in Red Wing in the 1930s. Noting that this was during the Great Depression, my mom said they were well-cared for, with three meals a day, warm beds, a present at Christmas and a cake for your birthday.
On this trip, I carried my mom’s ashes in a plain wooden box, intending to scatter them in Red Wing on her birthday. As we reached the town park by the Mississippi River, sightseers crowded the area. Moving to a quieter spot, Abby watched as I released the ashes into the water, bidding my mom farewell with a hopeful “Bon voyage, Mom.”
My mom had dreamed of exotic travels to places like New York City and Paris, but our family vacations were modest accommodations at a cabin in the northern Minnesota pines.
I knew the Mississippi River’s dependable depths would be the appropriate vessel for her nautical journey. From there, her ashes would flow to the Gulf of Mexico, be swept into the Gulf Stream, and then hug the coast of Caribbean islands before making a final push into the Atlantic Ocean to visit places she had only seen in Life magazine and the black-and-white romance films of the 1950s.
Years later, reading Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking,” I came to understand magical thinking — those blurred boundaries between reality and imagination that serve as a refuge from grief.
Over two decades have passed since my mom’s ashes began their voyage, and I imagine her traveling light, embracing new experiences along the way. For me, my mom is being carried by currents of memory and love, forever exploring our big old world.
And so she goes …
And so she goes on …
Spring Rain
By Megan Flood
I woke up late today,
saturated with sleep.
the expanse of the day is wide and open,
just me and the rain.
ok, there is laundry, and dishes,
and homework waiting in the corner.
but outside in our backyard spring
keeps drenching the ground.
rain and rain and rain
gray skies, chilly breeze.
and the apricot tree
beginning to blossom.