I pulled out my laptop and went on Google Earth. I typed in my mother’s childhood home address, but Google Earth didn’t recognize any matching location. I decided to turn to my mother and carried the spacecraft-like laptop to her. After placing it on top of an orange table mat, I asked her to help me find her parent’s house. She reacted surprised at first, but then went on to ask me if you can see it on there; if she can really revisit home on that stained screen marked by fingerprints. We typed in Hospital Street and the screen started to zoom into the peninsula my mother called home. We began driving down the road with the cursor and our fingers carefully placed on the laptop’s finger pad. While the images constantly shifted between green and light brown patches, she lit up. Her usually tired eyes, worn out by underpaid overtimes, brightened up and started narrating stories of places, encounters and histories. She suddenly looked younger than she had just minutes before; like the girl she’d describe she was but left behind when she crossed that fatal line.
Continue reading “Migrant Tales Literary: A return in Pixles”