In the Milky Way of Her Memories, the Roots of My Universe

“What are they?” the little one asked looking at the photographs.

“Fireworks,” I said. Then I thought about it and said, “They are the images of the roots of my universe, my mother’s memories.”

“See?” I asked. “They are like the violent and beautiful formations of the constellations of our lives: brilliant, falling like stars, illumined and frail. They are celestial. And though born of a barge from a river bank, they live among the stars whose infinite heaven they assail. Though fire born of factories, they could as easily be the fire of Orion.”

Maybe the little one understood me, I don’t know. How can one thing mean something other than what it is? But that is how I saw it as my mother sat watching the explosions. It was like I could see in her quiet and stunned attention a lifetime illumined inside her, places I cannot see but only visit in wonder. And when later that night she began to tell me her stories I knew it was the music and the explosions that had unlocked her.

When the little one asked me about the photographs that is what I wanted her to see too. Not the explosions for what they were in the sky. But the possibility of what their abstracted images might say about the explosions inside my mother’s memories. I wanted the little one to see what I saw. The Milky Way of my mother’s memories, the roots of my universe…..