Would any other mother have been possible?

from the sea  (5) - Baubo’s bird ludes by freda karpf

Why did the ancients all flee the island of Eleusis? Understanding origins begins with a riddle.  Puzzling out and matching pieces that can snap into place is the journey. Step back and see for yourself.  There is a line.  If you had a surveyor’s marker tied to your heels, the line with your delta childhood waves would come this way, right here where you are now, in the wake-up brainwaves of the present moment.  Looking back, nobody would have guessed the journey could have been so unpredictable. Even the journey in a suburban landscape has its wiggles and waggles.  Mrs. Scattergood’s roadmap was all over the place.  Most of it not conscious whatsoever. But the surveyor’s marker has created a complex map. Late autumn’s evening veil of tree limbs and branches would be more distinct. 

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     Heading home she didn’t know it as such but couldn’t resist the habit of old patterns and once again began talking to herself.  “Listen,” Mrs. Scattergood said out loud as if she were being distracted by other voices. She was back on the streets of Newark.  She saw Mrs. Baranhoff on the left like a tableau.  She was on the corner where she stopped her and told her she was Lena’s daughter.  She didn’t ask her, she told her she was Lena’s daughter. If someone as stately as Mrs. Baranhoff tells you something, even if it is something you know as fact, you take that information in, you nod as you listen. Because it was what Mrs. Baranhoff knew when she saw her face. That is a different kind of knowing. She remembered the gentle touch on her arm that opened this moment of recognition. She knew she was Lena’s daughter. Would any other mother have been possible? 

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     These days, Mrs. Scattergood made it a point to treat herself on her birthday.  One kid birthday equals at least ten adult birthdays.  A desire to celebrate has no equal measure in any activity. So Mrs. Scattergood had little mystery celebrations that happen like light through the clouds, sudden and illuminating.  Some things go like that. You’re always going to be Lena’s daughter, she told herself, no matter how many years old or how many years Lena is gone.  But it’s a good thing, still that Mrs. Baranhoff stopped her on the street.  Soup was a bridge to her own stories and felt tradition.  Who knows? Maybe kneydlas once represented sacred rocks.  Rather than the Song of the Earth, the movement of emotion should be about the soup of the earth. But her mother’s kneydlas were sometimes sacred rocks.

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     She knew how she came to be her mother’s daughter but not how she came to have Baubo in her life.  Baubo loved being there and Mrs. Scattergood did ask for help and healing and guidance. She knew this was a time in her life where she wished for these three. This was her trinity. Some days she held it like a trident on a core of deep gratitude.

Except from riding the waves:  a tale about being home in the world by freda karpf