The story begins by 37 year old Susana "Susy" Sonnenberg receiving a phone call from her aunt Irene. She informs her that her mother has been in a head-on collision car accident. She is currently in a coma and there is a possibility that she may not live. Her mother frequently joked about serious situations but she is stunned to find out that this isn’t a lie. Located in Montana, her mother residing in Barbados, she is torn. Should she say her last goodbye to her mother? Does she even have the guts to do it? Susana and her mother haven’t always been the best of friends. She then goes back to certain moments she had with her mother that stick out in head. Once she remembered her mom lying about having cancer. Then another time they took a Cosmo quiz together. It’s her mother, she had no choice; she had to go her mother in-law said. A couple days roll by and Susana did not leave while her sister was in Barbados waiting for her. Finally she revealed that she wouldn’t be coming when she called her. She began to feel the guilt set in on her. She would be the daughter that didn’t go to her mother’s deathbed. She just needed to stay where she was. Her childhood is introduced along with her mother’s scandalous lifestyle. How she, her mother, and younger sister went on a trip to the Grand Canyon and around the rest of the world after she picked her up from school one day.
Quotation:
“This is the moment in the story when the facts converge: the estranged daughter, the threat of death and the one last chance. All the telling should coalesce into a mutual truth. I overcame trepidation and did the right thing, my mother woke from her coma erased of her vulgar impulses and unable to lie, and my children admired my generosity and forbearance. Tragedy transformed us. But that’s not me. In my story I do not go. No one in the family disputes that.” (Sonnenberg, 11)
Reflection:
As I was reading, I picked up that the author writes in a more sophisticated manner. It’s not your typical read where regular things happen and is said straight forward. She uses more complex words to describe something simple. As the reader, it’s you responsibility to have deep thoughts and think if you want to understand what your reading. For instance, when I first read the quotation above I had no idea what it meant until I just re-read it and was typing it. Whiling I was doing so, I thought about what this quote really meant because the way it’s written doesn’t help you to understand the meaning right away. My first thought was that everything went back to normal but in reality this is just a thought the author is having. I'm getting the feeling that this may be something that she does often during the story so it’s important to take note on it now.
-what words have strong meaning to them?
ReplyDelete-why does the narrator say "the moment when the facts converge?"