Santiago de Campostela

Pilgrims everywhere with backpacks, having just arrived at their destination – Santiago de Campostela. I’m sitting in a store looking at the image of Saint James and thinking about how I’ve been flogging myself since I left New Orleans about how harsh a judge I’ve been to my mother. Always there with my arms folded when she misbehaved. I remember the Mercedes she bought and was so proud of just when Steve and I were trying to buy her a Toyota Camry. Instead the Mercedes worked for a few months and then after spending more than she paid for it, it sat in her driveway until it was hauled away. Her leaving Dad in the middle of the night to join her girls in New Orleans when my sister and I had both moved back here in our early twenties. We were then and now, her only friends. I remember saying to my sister, “What is she is going to do?” when she arrived at our doorstep.

The question continues – then and now – what is she going to do?

In Santiago, standing in the shadow of that beautiful church, in that lovely square, I shrugged. She will do what she wants to do. It’s time I accept that.

campo

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