Later
February 9, 2017 § Leave a comment
Later
I am holding my grandmother’s diary of 1940, printed by Caxton Press and sold by C. Coomaraswamy Naidu & Sons of 27 Chinnatambi Street, Madras, India. Pages of printed information explain how to treat sunstroke or the bite of a mad dog or when to expect a full moon or how to write a will. But what I most want to know is what my grandmother felt the day my mother boarded the S.S. President Garfield to begin a long and lonely voyage across the world. I turn to Saturday, July 13 and I am stunned to see nothing – not one word. How can this be?
Perhaps my mother and grandmother were worn out from the long journey from the dusty plains of Podili to the bustling wharves of Bombay, too exhausted to talk. And what could they say, what words could they give to each other that could feed the hunger in their hearts?
Three months later a huge cyclone would sweep through the coast of Bombay, uprooting trees, boats, lives.
[Note: This is one section of my essay “Dangerous Archaeology: A Daughter’s Search for Her Mother (and Others) – A Memoir in Fragments” published in Hayden’s Ferry Review #50, Spring/Summer 2012]
Martha Andrews Donovan: One Writer's Excavation 
Leave a Reply