My mother’s girlhood poems are recorded in white ink on black pages, in a book intended for photographs. The pages are brittle, and some of them have disconnected at their perforations, so that when I open it now they flutter to the floor if I’m not careful.

I’m careful now as I flip through the pages, but I wasn’t always. As a kid I thumbed through quickly, looking for my favorite, the one she wrote at 13, titled A Visit to the Moon. I’d memorized the lines by the time I was six or seven and the magic of the opening would send me drifting, like her, to imaginary worlds.

“One day I saw a rainbow

a-reaching way up high.

I asked, “Where are you going?”

He said, “Into the sky.

I’m going to pay a visit

To the old man in the moon.

If you would care to come along,

Climb on, we’ll be there soon.”

I loved the image of that rainbow, the girl (my mother) riding it  into the sky. She encouraged me to clack out my own poems and stories on her old portable typewriter, and seeing my words in print would puff me up with pride.

Mom continued to write, too, though her secretarial job and raising three kids on her own took up most of her time. Primary Pulmonary Hypertension sucked the breath from my mother and ended her life at 62. In the process of cleaning out her condo I came across pages of poetry and steno pads filled with journal entries.

I spent the winter after her death numb with shock, my senses dulled. Nothing felt good. Everything seemed grey and lifeless. During a trip to Jamaica that spring, I found healing in the sound of the sea, the feel of the soft sand under my feet, the bright colors and sensuous tastes and smells. Finally my senses awakened and I found I could enjoy life’s pleasures again.

On my last night in Negril, I took a final dip in the sea. Floating on my back, I recalled words from Mom’s journal, describing her love of the beach. She had described the peace she found whenever she swam in the ocean, and how feeling the water supporting her weight and the sun on her face as she floated on her back brought her the closest to God she’d ever felt. I was teary in the sea thinking of her words, and wishing I had some indication she was really at peace now. I whispered to the sky, “Miss you, Momma.”

When we got home and were looking at pictures I realized my husband had taken a shot of me while I was swimming. I remembered the way the sun glistened off the crest of small waves, the sense of oneness I’d felt with the world at that moment. I remembered seeing the sailboat in the distance, but what I didn’t see while I was there was the rainbow.