There is a picture on my wall and in it,
I am sitting on my mother’s lap.
My feet dangle in the warm, shallow, rocky waters of Lake Simcoe.

The sky is blue and the lake is calm.
My mother’s arm is around my chest.
One of my hands is on her hand and my other is on her thigh.

She is smiling at my smiling brother who also sits in the water.

And I, I am happy.
There we are, in the garden, with our mother,

surrounded by nature...

oh, how long ago.

​

I believe that picture was taken in my second summer.

Little did I realize at the time that I would only have a few summers

with my beautiful mother, Gloria Bayla Berger.

Some months before my third birthday, on a cold December day,

my mother headed off on a journey with my father

to visit her brother who was living on a coconut grove

on the Southern tip of Mexico

on the Pacific coast.

 

The day she left for that journey was the last day that I set eyes on her.

And with her disappearance, my life changed

in ways I could have never imagined.