No matter how far we travel, the memories will follow in the baggage car. — August Strindberg, Miss Julie
Creepy fact? Tim’s father, whom I never met, died on my birthday. My mother, whom Tim never met, died on his birthday. So each year, August 8 and February 6 come and go with very mixed emotions.
What does this have to do with travel? Not much, really. Or does it? Isn’t memory a form of travel — of going back to revisit (sometimes, whether we want to or not) places we’ve been, people we’ve known, dumb things we’ve done and good things we probably should have done. I think so.
And sometimes these infernal “trips down memory lane,” as they’re snidely called, exhaust me more than a ten-hour flight with three connections.
As I approach the date of my mother’s death, I’ve started thinking about all things Dorothy. The Wizard of Oz, certainly. The late Bea Arthur’s irrepressible character on Golden Girls. And, maybe most of all, Marvin Bell’s ecstatically romantic love poem, “To Dorothy.”
I first came upon Marvin Bell, who taught for many years at the prestigious and downright scary Iowa Writers’ Workshop, during my three summers at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference in Middlebury, Vermont. He was my manuscript advisor one year, and I still remember his kindness.
He read each summer, and each time he read this particular poem. He apparently reads it at every reading he gives, whether Dorothy is present or not. It is the ultimate expression of love and I share it with you here, in memory of my mother, Dorothy.
To Dorothy
You are not beautiful, exactly.
You are beautiful, inexactly.
You let a weed grow by the mulberry
And a mulberry grow by the house.
So close, in the personal quiet
Of a windy night, it brushes the wall
And sweeps away the day till we sleep.
A child said it, and it seemed true:
“Things that are lost are all equal.”
But it isn’t true. If I lost you,
The air wouldn’t move, nor the tree grow.
Someone would pull the weed, my flower.
The quiet wouldn’t be yours. If I lost you,
I’d have to ask the grass to let me sleep.
— Marvin Bell, New and Selected Poems, 1987, Atheneum
Buon viaggio, Mom.
Buon viaggio a tutti.
Linda Dini Jenkins is a card-carrying Italophile, travel planner, freelance writer, and amateur photographer. Travel is her passion, so writing about her travels just comes naturally. She hopes all her travelers find a way to express their joys, surprises, and fears as they travel and gives every traveler a nifty journal to help smooth the way. Learn more…
