The Western Daughter

There's a dark red leafed tree that stands in the courtyard of the college where I tutor on the weekends. It is a tree I remember watching when my mother had her stroke and later, the object of my anger after her death when the leaves twirled in a breeze my mother could not feel.

Today, while eating a quick snack in the eating area of the school, I stare at the tree and it no longer shoots pain in me. Instead it brings wonder as I finish Amy Tan's novel, "The Bonesetter's Daughter." A howl lurches in my throat at the beauty of Tan's ending, and the sight of the crimson tree. I know reading this novel is not a coincidence.

My mother used to say things such as "bleeding like a stuck pig," and "were you raised in a barn?" Amy Tan's intensity in linguistics and metaphor cracks open my awareness of the language of my mother. I see the hilarity and sorrow of her every inflection. I smile and witness the tree and I no longer fear or resent any realm. My mother is with me. She is as secure as the bones in this daughter.