Woman Who Flew Home

By Jeremiah Hawkins



I‘ve decided to write of my mother, something I swore I would never do. Let her rest in peace, I would always tell myself, don’t excavate those events, don’t resurrect that story from the comfortable shadows that have blanketed it over the years. Hasn’t enough been written about her already? 
Although, when I reread her letters one rainy Saturday morning, letters always signed “Love, your mother, Wu Sibi,” I felt compelled to dig up the past and let my memories of her be documented. And do so for my own purposes rather than setting any records straight. 
Wu Sibi was the name given to her by her acquired family in Africa, loosely translated: The Woman Who Flies. …But, Africa is where this story ends, not begins. 
My mother, Anne Eldridge, was a woman of old money, wealthy beyond most normal people’s comprehension, and so was never without the protection that money provides. Though, of course, we must all agree there are tragedies from which no amount of money can shield. 
My mother lost both her parents at a young age. Her mother suffered from some sort of undiagnosed mental illness, while at the same time her father suffered from a mental illness that was far more easily diagnosed: infidelity. The two were a recipe for tragedy, to say the least. 
While my grandmother remained home pinned to inner darkness by depression, her husband shopped around for a brighter future—new wife, new kids, new everything. A torrential cycle inevitably ensued: the more he stayed away, the worse she got; the worse she got, the more he stayed away. And so on. Though, it wasn’t until the actual abandonment that my grandmother swallowed three full bottles of aspirin and assured the success of suicide. 
My mother was twelve. 
She never spoke of this. In fact, she rarely ever spoke of her parents at all. Well, except for the pies. From what I’ve heard, my grandmother made great pies. 
Fortunately, my mother had loving grandparents who took good care of her during her adolescence, cheering her on as she maintained a GPA that kept her in the top five percent of her class, as well as openly appreciating her passion for painting, never discouraging her from pursuing art as a career. I always assumed their unyielding support of my mother was derived from their pity for her, along with their own grief over the death of their daughter.
She got into Yale and it was here that she met my father, Steve Millard, who came from even wealthier origins. Like her, he was a dreamer—his eyes and thoughts so often wooed by the clouds, and as a child he dreamt of soaring in and around and through them. Flying was an undying passion to my father that never faded and never grew too familiar to be exhilarating. My mother loved his emotional stability, and he adored her quirks and shiftiness.  
And so, regardless of wealth or rank and all the resulting superficiality that saturates all that is social, they fell madly in love and remained so the rest of their lives. They were wed a month after graduating college.
Following my father’s short commission in the Air Force, they started a small airline with two private jets donated to them by my father’s uncle. They named it Northway Airlines. With as many connections as they had between them, along with their financial backing and youthful personalities, the airline grew rapidly, profiting millions of dollars within the first ten years. 
The logo, I think, also helped. 
My mother painted many things, but nothing did she enjoy painting more than pies, various kinds with various backgrounds, but always pies. My father chose his favorite and had it painted onto the tail of the first two jets, as well as every plane they bought thereafter. “Pie in the Sky” was the official logo.  
About the time the airline soared from private industry to commercial, they had me, Kay, the only child they would have. We were a happy family. I retain vivid memories of playing board games and laughing, exploring the downtown area near our penthouse atop my father’s shoulders and stopping at any theater or museum that might look appealing. I remember vacations to exotic locations like beaches, mountains, and historic places where my father would tell me the story behind a particular monument or landmark in just the right way to keep a child’s attention. 
My early childhood was more than anyone could ask. Things were good, at least, that is, until the day my father’s plane went down. I was eleven. I remember it well. It changed everything. That day split my history as the life of Jesus split Western history, branding an A.D. forever into my memory. We were at my mother’s country club.
 	“You flirt,” my mother said as she, Ashley, and I sat down at a table, me with my strawberry-banana smoothie, and them with their thick green mess they called a smoothie. They attended yoga class twice a week at the country club. Since there was plenty of activities a kid my age would enjoy, when I wasn’t in school, I tagged along. Plus, back then, I adored my mother and followed her around whenever possible.
	“Who me?” Ashley said with a sly smirk. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
	“Oh come on. What were you and Guru Gary discussing for so long after class?” Guru Gary was the yoga instructor—a tall, muscular man with a nice smile. I’m not sure if he called himself that or if the ladies gave him that nickname.
	“That was nothing. Totally innocent,” said Ashley with a wave of her hand.
	“Spit it out, Ashley,” my mother said.
	“All right, all right, he invited me to some get together. That’s all. Totally innocent, like I said.” Ashley reverted her eyes and sipped her swampy smoothie.
	“A party?”
	“Well, not exactly.”
	“Are you going to go?”
	Ashley laughed. “Yeah, I think I will. And—you know what?—I’m not going to tell Blake.”
	“You’re so bad,” my mother said and laughed. But then, after spotting something unexpected in Ashley’s expression, her smile slipped off her face. “You’re serious.”
	“Well, maybe.”
	“You can’t do that,” my mother said matter-of-factly. 
	Ashley paused, and then said, “Oh come on, Anne, not everyone has what you have with Steve. Blake is never home. And even when he is… Look, a girl has to take care of herself.”
	“He’s busy, as you always say. He’s got a lot on his mind. It won’t always be like that.”
	“Anne, dear, I can’t live in the future. Just as Gary always says, we have to live in the here-and-now.”
	“I don’t know. I—”
	“Hey, I have an idea,” Ashley said, bringing back her smile. “You should come. You can chaperone and keep me in line. It’ll be fun.”
	“When is—”
	“Anne!” a voice sounded from the bar area of the lounge. “Come look at this!”
	My mother and Ashley rose and made their way to the bar where the bartender was turning up the volume on the television. I wasn’t far behind. On the television was a live feed of a plane crash in northern Iowa. The reporter, as well as the words running across the bottom of the screen, made it evident that the plane was one of ours. As the television reported this tragedy—a death count in the hundreds—club members crowded around to give support to my mother, saying such things as: “It’ll be fine. No one watches the news anymore, anyways” and “Every airline goes through this at some point” and “The airline will bounce back, they always do.” My mother merely nodded in silence.
	She then suddenly jerked her head to her right and said, “What? Who said that?”
	“Who said what?” asked Ashley.
	“Someone said something.”
	“Mom, almost everyone said something,” I said.
	“No, some other voice.” She shook her head as if to shake a disturbing thought out of her mind. “My left shoulder feels funny.” 
	“Are you okay?” Ashley asked.
	“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.”
	It was about this time that the news arrived. The reporter, his right hand pressed against his earpiece, told me that my father was on that plane, that my father was dead. 
We were informed that he had personally offered to take some big-money investor on a random commercial flight, a spontaneous decision to demonstrate to the investor how confident he was in the quality of his airline. Some even say that he allowed the investor to draw a flight number out of a hat to insure randomness.
	Following the news, the crowd of club members slyly dispersed, saying nothing, leaving my mother and me peering up at the television. Alone. 
I grabbed her hand, and a couple seconds later, in the corner of my eye, I saw her head twitch twice. Then, she fainted. 
	
The months following my father’s death, I only remember my mother. I forgot myself. I forgot my life. I know I went to school, but I don’t remember it. I remember my mother. My pain was my mother’s pain, and I don’t know if I bore my own grief independent of hers. As I said, I was eleven.
My mother locked herself in a dark place. However, it wasn’t the depression, but her disorder that made life hell for me. In the middle of the night she often woke up screaming such things as, “Leave me alone! Shut up! Why? Why?” and I would jerk myself out of bed and run to her room to console her back to sleep. 
Sleep was difficult for me, as well. I think it was during this period of time that I formed the habit of embracing a plush pillow to get to sleep, a habit that remained with me into adulthood. Nights were rough on both of us, and so we often looked forward to the sunrise. But with the rise of the sun, all anxieties were not always dissolved. 
	Maybe to cope, or maybe to pass the time—who knows why?—but my mother began talking to herself. At first she merely rambled on while performing daily tasks, but as the days passed these self-talks became heated conversations. Some were so fiery and intense that she’d lose her train-of-thought, and in so doing would say something to herself and then look about the room in a daze, and respond, “Huh?”
	Within a few months, her self-talk gradually became focused, in that, she began conversing with a consistent imaginary friend—a friend she never called by name. She was fond of this friend, a friend who, in difficult times, would place his/her hand on her left shoulder, a feeling she described as warm and tingly. I thought it merely nerves. During her sobbing fits, she would usually sit or lie down with her right hand resting on her left shoulder, apparently holding on to her friend’s hand. 
The summer before I began High School, I discovered the identity of this friend. But, that night isn’t locked in my memory because of the discovery alone. I remember it well because it was the night my mother left… in more ways than one.
	It was a stormy night as she fought with her friend, a bitter argument about the state of her life, one of which was like, to me, listening to someone fight over the phone. The degree of her anger frightened me.
	“What are you talking about! Everything is fine! No, no, I have plenty of friends. It was just yesterday that Sharon and I had lunch. It was very nice. What? What are you talking about? Are you crazy?” She stood up and began marching about the room. “Why do you say that? You don’t know how I feel! You’re always telling me how I feel! It’s infuriating!” She grabbed a lamp and threw it down on the floor, shattering it. “I am calm! Oh how? How can you do that? Well, so what? Aren’t I entitled to it? You just died! You were everything to me! Dammit! How is that to help me?” She sat back down. “I know you do. I never doubted your love. But what you’re saying is crazy.” She listened for a couple minutes and then cried. “Why are you doing this to me? Haven’t you put me through enough? I don’t care about me! Can’t you see? I don’t care! I don’t care! I will never be happy again. It would have been better if I were on that plane with you. I know. Yeah. I understand.” 
She quieted for at least fifteen minutes. I would have gone back to my room, but I knew by the occasional nodding of her head and other minor indicators, that the discussion was still underway. My eyes were getting heavy, as it was nearing midnight. Then, some sort of epiphany spilled across my mother’s face. She rose to her feet and paced about again, but this time with an air of determination. 
	“Yes, I see that. That makes sense. Honey, that sounds good, I can do that. Yeah, you’re right. And, it...” Her eyes shot up to the ceiling, wide open and glistening with tears. She took in a deep breath, covering her open mouth with both hands. “I will make sure of it, my love, my beloved!” With immense resolve and energy, she threw on her shoes, grabbed something out of her purse, and flew out the door in utter disregard to the rain.
	I quickly found my shoes and umbrella and followed. My intention wasn’t to bring her back home. To be honest, I don’t know why I chased after her that night. I suppose I felt I had no choice; sleep wasn’t an option knowing she was running around at night in the rain, and waiting up for her return would have been a torturous worry fest. 
	I followed her to an all night grocery store where she proceeded straight to an ATM and pulled out a large stack of money, probably the maximum withdrawal amount. Her pace was speedy, forcing me—a short girl—to jog in order to keep her in sight.
	Not far from our penthouse was an alley where homeless people congregated and slept. She stormed right into the middle of this alley and began causing a raucous, throwing off cardboard shelters and exposing the residents to the weather. I was frightened of the alley, so I remained on the major street. She woke everyone, flung herself on them, embraced them in the rain, and forced money into their hands. As she disturbed each homeless person, I saw by his or her expressions that I wasn’t the only person frightened by her that night. She flew about like a mad woman. As soon as the money ran out, she power walked home, grabbed clothes, food and whatever else she could carry and returned to the alley. She continued going back and forth all night. After the third trip, I ceased following her, went to my room and locked the door. I don’t remember if I slept, but I do remember crying.
	That night, that conversation with my dead father, that insane revelation was what changed her forever. That was the point of demarcation: she had transformed from my mother into Wu Sibi. 
	 
Around the next year or so, she made the media for the first time. It was a touching story about a wealthy woman giving to the poor where the journalist likened her to Mother Theresa. 
	She kept busy and I never heard her scream at night anymore—that is, when she slept at home—and so, I tried to live my own life, separated from the chaos that had possessed my mother. This turned out to be near impossible.
	There was a time during my junior year of High School that she didn’t come home for five consecutive nights. I worried, of course, but in a forced attempt to maintain my freedom, I made myself shrug it off. If something’s happened to her, I would tell myself, it’s her own damn fault. She fortunately returned unharmed, but smelling and looking awful. She told me she’d been staying with a girl named Jennifer who ran away from home.  
	“A girl named Jennifer?” I asked. “What, on the streets?”
	“Yes, she was living on the streets,” said my mother.
	“You’ve been living on the streets.”
	“Yes, dear, I’ve been living on the streets.”
	“That’s just great, mom. Just fantastic!” I said, my voice increasing in volume with every word.
	“Are you all right, Kay?”
	“Yep, just dandy. Actually no, mom, I’m not all right.”
	“We can talk about it, if you like,” she said.
	“I have nothing to say. I mean, where do I begin, right? You have no idea who I am or what is going on with your own daughter. You’re off—you know—doing whatever you do, giving all our stuff away and I’m living my life alone. You don’t care what is going on with me. All you care about is yourself and your… your dirty, homeless people. Look at you. Just look at you!” I felt like I was riding a river of emotion where the current sped up floating me right into the rapids, out of control. I could foresee a waterfall up ahead and yet there was no avoiding it. “You’re a mess, mother. You look like a bum and you smell like garbage, garbage that, that’s been in the sun all day! You’re a stupid woman, do you know that? A stupid, selfish woman! I bet you didn’t even know that I’m making A’s in all my classes, while on student council, while on the softball team. Did you know that? Don’t nod your head! Don’t act like you know anything about me!” As much as I fought it, tears began to stream down my cheeks. “You’re selfish, you’re so selfish! You don’t give a shit about anyone else except yourself! You don’t give a shit! You just don’t care.” 
	My anger running its course, I stood there before my mother, sobbing, waiting for her to respond, fearing her response. During the brief silent interlude a lone tear traced down my mother’s cheek. 
	“I—can’t…” She paused and her body seemed to shiver. She then closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I love you, Kay. I really do.” 
	Then, my mother turned and walked up the stairs. Midway up she placed her right hand on her left shoulder. I understood then—maybe by the way she shivered or maybe the way she looked at me when she told me she loved me—that her choice to become who or what she had become was no choice at all. She could not tolerate this life being anything else.
	I learned about her five-day tour of the streets from the newspapers. Apparently, Jennifer was a sixteen year old daughter of a rich family, almost as rich as our own. She ran away from home a year prior and got into drugs. She was heavily addicted to heroine when my mother stumbled upon her. Jennifer told the reporter that my mother did nothing more than stay with her, feed her, hold her, and at night, sing to her. My mother never told her what to do, not even when Jennifer went to prostitute herself out. The reporter quoted Jennifer saying, “I forgot what it was like to be loved, and when I got a taste of it again from Anne, I decided to return home. I needed to return home.”
	
When I went off to college, my mother sold the house and moved into a small one-bedroom apartment. I had to read of it in the papers. I didn’t know what she was doing with her money, and I didn’t care as long as tuition got paid and I received my allowance. The media was still calling her Mother Theresa as they spoke of her extreme generosity, as well as her financial intelligence, which came as a surprise to me. She wasn’t merely throwing money about haphazardly, but dealing it out strategically, “maximizing her money’s effort,” wrote the reporter. 
	During my second year of college, I got a call from Charles, my father’s close friend and business partner. He said my mother agreed to meet with him and he thought I should be present, as well. After inquiring into my mother’s current state of mind, Charles thought it wise for the meeting to be as informal as possible, just the three of us.  
	It was held on a cloudy Wednesday morning. We met in the Northway Airlines conference room. It had been awhile since I’d been there and my mother’s painting of a pie adorning the walls, as well as the smell, brought back memories of my father.  
	“Anne, it’s so nice to see you,” Charles said, addressing a woman that looked nothing like the woman he remembered. She was dressed in the plainest of clothes, a gray short-sleeve shirt atop a brown skirt that stretched down to her ankles. Her hair had hardened and decayed from blonde silk to beige straw. No makeup. 
	“It is nice to see you, too, Charles. It’s been a long time.”
	“You don’t mind that I asked Kay to be here, do you?” he asked.
	“Oh no, not at all. I haven’t seen my daughter in weeks.”
	“Months, mom. It’s been months,” I mumbled under my breath. She hugged me and we all sat down.
	“Well Anne,” Charles began with a very business-like clap of his hands, “I know you’re a busy lady now-a-days, so I won’t beat around the bush. I asked you here today to talk about the company. Now, ever since Steve’s passing, I’ve devoted my life to Northway Airlines. And, to be honest, I think the company has done pretty well. I’m sure by the size of the checks you’ve been receiving, you are aware of how well we’ve been doing. But, we want to do better. We always want to do better. The thing is we are considering a merger, one that will be in our best interests as to who we are now and where we want to go in the future.”	
	“All right,” She said. “What are the significant terms of this merger?”
	Charles chuckled, leaned forward in his chair, and said, “Well, here it is: if we merge, we will become an international airline, which would take us to a whole new level. Just a few minor changes will incur as a result. The only one that concerns you is the logo and the name, Northway Airlines. They will have to go. Our prospective partners think a change is necessary. You know, freshen things up a bit.”
	“No, no,” said my mother, shaking her head, “we can’t get rid of the logo or the name. They will have to agree to new terms.”
	“Well, um,” Charles coughed into his hand, “The board has already voted unanimously to the current terms, and contracts are already being drawn up.”
“What? But that would be like erasing our names from the company we built from scratch, Charles.” My mother’s face tensed and I grew uncomfortable.
	“No, not really. You will still control a good deal of stock, and the dividends will be through the roof. Trust me. If you sign off on this, you won’t believe the growth we will experience.”
	“Stock? Dividends? No, absolutely not. I will not agree to that. Steve will have a fit.”
	“Oh, come on, Anne, don’t be dramatic. I don’t believe Steve would have had a problem with it.” He sighed. “Please don’t take offense to this. You see, you knew him far better than anyone else in most ways, but I knew him better as to his business side. I think he would be on the front lines of this merger. Anne, I know he would.”
	My mother quickly turned to her left and said to the air: “Hush, my love, I can handle this,” and then tapped her left shoulder. “No absolutely not. This will not happen.”
	“Wait, wait, wait. Anne, come now, you aren’t making a sound judgment. It’s just a logo. You’re not being wise, and you’re letting your emotions get the best of you.”
	“Wise?” My mother leaned forward in her chair. “Charles, let me tell you something. Wisdom is one’s breadth of awareness, and mine is plenty broad right now. Let me ask you something. What is more important: money or a logo? Or, what is more significant: your name or the cash in your wallet? Your name remains, cash comes and goes. What good is the acquisition of the whole world at the expense of your name and your identity? I tell you, if you were wise, you would keep the name.”
	 “Anne, you’re not being reasonable,” said Charles, his body squirming in its chair. “Okay, hold on. It’s just a logo, think about it. What is a logo, really? It’s just advertising, it’s petty. Anne, be reasonable. Think of your husband’s legacy.”
	She looked to her left again and paused, as if listening. 
	“What are you doing?” he asked. He leaned forward and gripped her shoulders. My mother stared down at his right hand on her left shoulder. Then he said, “Please, you have to let go of the past. You have to stop living for him. He’s gone. You need to come back down to Earth. You can’t base your decisions on some event that happened years ago. You have to snap out of it. All we have is here and now. Do you understand?”
	“Yes Charles, I understand, trust me. But, I’m still not going to let you get rid of the logo. Do you understand?” 
	Charles let go of her shoulders and leaned back in his chair, defeated. Then he said, “Kay, do you have anything to say?”
	I told him I didn’t. He understood that my mother was a bit loony, but what he didn’t understand was that she was no longer my mother. She was something else. Therefore, thinking I would have any leverage for persuasion was a misjudgment on his part.
	“Anne, just think of your daughter,” said Charles as a last resort, “this merger will set her up far beyond anything you can dream of, not to mention her children and her children’s children.”
	“Is that why she’s here, Charles?”
	“Well… no, she—”
	“Charles, just forget it,” she said, and then stood up to leave. “It was nice seeing you, but we’re done here.”
	The merger never took place, and so the planes continued to fly under the title of Northway Airlines with the logo: Pie in the Sky. 
	
About the time I was entering graduate school, as well as therapy for not being able to maintain a romantic relationship for any significant amount of time, my mother founded the Pie Foundation. It began humbly, with one office in one city and one underpaid, charitable employee. Its purpose was to creatively search the city for odd jobs and tasks that have often fallen victim to neglect, and pay homeless people to do them. Some of these odd jobs were what most deemed “community service,” while others fell into a different category, like helping the elderly and handicap, working at an orphanage, visiting those in prison, etc. Any task would be considered. The money to pay the employees and homeless people came solely out of my mother’s pocket, and so the work was free to those who benefited. 
	As anyone would guess, the Pie Foundation spread rapidly from city to city, and then from state to state. My mother conducted all interviews and did all the hiring. The job description was to connect suitable homeless people with a suitable task, and pay them proportionately while remaining within a budget. Finding good people to perform this job was easy because the pay was terrible. It’s ironic that in the business of charity, as opposed to almost all other forms of business, those who will work for less are the good ones. 
My knowledge of her activities was still governed by the media, for we rarely spoke. All heralded her, and I even heard talk of a Nobel Peace Prize. The only negative reports at the time were the complaints regarding her refusal to be interviewed, and even then, for every person that complained there was a person who celebrated her for this. She was famous worldwide, a hot topic. All I wanted to do was forget about her, and yet I couldn’t avoid hearing about her, couldn’t go more than a few days without someone inquiring about her. And, during my weekly therapy sessions I was forced to talk about almost nothing else.   
In time, her fame shifted in polarity, from positive to negative, which augmented her newsworthiness; negative news gets far better ratings than positive. 
The Pie Foundation grew to such an extent that my mother’s income could no longer sustain it. She committed herself to fundraising, and through philanthropy, the Pie Foundation thrived a bit longer. But when she abruptly and without explanation abandoned it all to go live in Africa among tribal people, all those who once loved her turned their backs on her simultaneously. The journalist who nicknamed her Mother Theresa now labeled her Miss Hughes, after the late Howard Hughes—a nickname thought by most to be witty and befitting. This particular journalist, when she was popular, never wrote of her conversations with her dead husband, but as soon as her popularity waned, he wrote of little else in regards to her. 
Within two years of her departure, the last surviving Pie Foundation had to shut down; there were just too many needy people, not enough money, and too many willing to scam the system.
She made her home in Africa the year I got my first job out of school. I was happy she left. I felt I could finally start a life that was my own, apart from her. Her fame began to wane, and I sensed freedom was just around the corner. 
But, within a year of her settling into her new home, I received a handwritten letter from her. It was warm and genuine. It took me two months to write her back, and when I did, my response was emotionally detached and short. I didn’t expect her to write back soon, but she did. 
I continued to write short, delayed letters, as she wrote long, full ones that were consistently affectionate and open. It was strange. In time, it didn’t feel like I was corresponding with my mother, but an old friend with whom a falling out had occurred and it was time to reunite. I began to look forward to her next letter.
She would tell me stories about her new family and the progress of her assimilation. It was a tough life, mostly centered on basic survival, she said, but learning the language turned out to be the most difficult task. She told me about how she bought a helicopter and learned to fly it herself, which allowed her to travel to the nearest town for supplies. It was this that earned her the new name, Wu Sibi: The Woman Who Flies, a name she wore proudly. 
I told her many things, as well. My most memorable letters, in fact, were the ones written about my boyfriend at the time, whom had just proposed to me. I turned him down at first, but would later say yes. We wrote abundantly about this.
I planned to visit her in Africa, even worked out some of the logistics. But this plan, unfortunately, never found fruition. For this, I remain wounded to this day, a wound that goes even deeper than the one incurred by her death. 

I was packing a bag to go to my ten-year college reunion when I heard the news report that my mother’s body was found in the desert. It was malaria. Dropping everything, my fiancé and I flew to Africa, revealing to myself how easy it was to do. The entire flight I beat myself up for not making the trip earlier. 
We hired a tour guide to take us about, someone who knew the language of my mother’s tribe. I saw where she slept, walked her favorite trails, sat with my fiancé in front of her beloved water spot, admired her numerous paintings of African landscape and wildlife, and sat in her helicopter. Taped within the dilapidated aircraft was a lone picture of me as a child. I stared at it and shook my head, trying not to cry. My fiancé placed his hand on my shoulder. 
“Wu Sibi,” I said, as a couple tears glided down my cheeks, “The Woman Who Flies.” 
We spoke to those who knew her best. They told us that she refused to get treated for malaria and purposely wandered into the desert to die because that was what the elders of the tribe did. 
It seemed that she was happy during her last days. The village was good for her. She was among a people that didn’t think she was crazy, didn’t act awkwardly when she spoke to her dead husband, never took advantage of her kindness, and always appreciated her. 
When her body was found, it is said that she looked peaceful, that she was on her back, arms outspread, and her head tilted over resting on her left shoulder. 
Right before she died she wrote something in the sand next to her. A tribesman, who saw the writing prior to being blurred by wind, memorized the symbols and carved them into wood, never to be lost. As she lied there awaiting death, she wrote: “I’m coming, my love, I’m coming home.” 
After her passing, her new family conducted an all-night ceremony of song and dance. During our stay, they honored me with a smaller version of that ceremony, playing a song they had written for her. Our guide translated the lyrics as they were sung. They named it after her, though it wasn’t titled Wu Sibi, as they had given her a new name.
The song spoke to me in such a way that, as I write this, my hand trembles trying to render its personal meaning. Deep within the erratic, African beats that somehow coalesced into a harmony, I felt the passionate woman into which my mother had transformed so many years ago; but in the caressing melodies of the accompanying female voices, I was overwhelmed with the soft essence of the woman I remember who nurtured and loved me as a young child. Their song captured her in a way nothing else could. 
In her letters to me, between the words portraying Wu Sibi’s foreign ways, lay a spirit infallibly familiar to me, as familiar as family. And yet, I doubted—a necessary doubt covering a shadowy wound. But that song erased the doubt and released something in me that I didn’t know was there. As the voices soared, twirling and dancing with the sparks from the fire before disappearing into the night, a dark pain lifted. 
I thank God daily for that song. A song that celebrated a life well lived. A song that brought my mother back to me. Or, maybe I should say, a song that lifted me up to her. A song titled Wu Sibi Ulabi: The Woman Who Flew Home.