The figure's frame was both painful and consoling. The shore represented a triumphant end to a day-long journey down the Atzala rivers edge for the Lopez twins, but was also an end to the family that Mayra had always known. Mayra had spent a year envisioning how this journey would go – in part because she had always been the planner of the siblings, but also because it was important to honor her mother’s passing. As a first-generation child of a Mexican immigrant family, Mayra always wondered what her trip “home” would look like. Whether it would be with her parents, sharing a caldo de pollo in one of the homes of a distant Tia, or simply with friends on a summer trip to Cancun. It would never be a true trip home for her - her real home was California. And yet, when her mother died of severe pneumonia this past fall Mayra knew that the trip would become a true homecoming, for her mother.

As Mayra sat on the boat she remembered the many nights her mother would describe the river at the edge of town. Ana would tell tales of how the river’s turns were like the unexpected twists life could take and how they were blessings in disguise. How a turn of the river created pools of life and refuge for the newly spawned fish. How the rapids, though difficult, would always open to calmer waters, had you the trust to see them through. And as her brother Junior carefully packed away the vase that held Ana’s ashes, Mayra couldn’t help but feel anger at the turns and rapids of this river. The freezing water was drowning Mayra and the dark depths looked to be an inescapable sadness.

Where was her life? Where were her calmer waters?

When Junior dutifully spread their mother’s ashes along the river bed opposite their family home, all Mayra could do was watch. She felt powerless, she couldn’t stop those ashes from being, as much as she could stop those rapids from churning. Then from beneath the surface of her sorrow Mayra remembered she wasn’t alone. The steady and resolute strength of the river was as much a part of her family as it was present in the working hands of her mother, and more presently her brother. She began seeing the sweat beading down Junior’s face and how he held on to the motor as if it would fly away at any moment, and she knew he shared her grief despite its silence. The story of her family river was one she knew but she had only experienced through loss. It was then she noticed the figure on the bank was a familiar one. And as Junior guided them toward the figure of their mother, Mayra knew that maybe she would find her calm waters in the family home on the Atzala rivers edge. Perhaps on the other side of those rapids, where their mother was waiting.