exploration

My mother vividly describes the parcels that arrived from South America in the sparse days of a childhood in the former Yugoslavia. Parcels of treasures like the beautiful jumper this once was. But also containing vivid dreams and evocative names that curl from her tongue: Santiago, Macchu Pichu, Punta Arenas, Tupiza, Santa Cruz. Jewel bright, they shine in her memory, though the photos are old and faded.

Photographs of sepia-toned market stallholders, factory owners, copper mine foremen, men whose eyes and jaw-lines I recognise in my brothers. Uncles and cousins went in waves, drawn by the chance to make it, the need to support their families; driven by early death, the draft, family politics.

Even when those who had gone before smoothed the way
where half of Humac had gone to live
it was a hard life: these people worked like slaves
At that distance, there was betrayal:
when he died the brother went to Bolivia and collected all his earnings, and didn't share it with his sister;
he left her with two small children and never returned, he'd made a new life, taken another wife
but also loyalty: he didn't dare write until he had some money to send home;
his uncles found him a job;
he became the head of the family when the father died young, he sent the money for his brothers' education.

My mother and I found once found a few brittle letters in the attic, faded and discoloured, whispering like dry leaves of love and loss and words that still brought tears. A son writing to his mother across an ocean of tears:
he was always planning to come home and see his mother, and then she died, and he died not long after.

The ties have persisted. My mother still writes though these generations have no language in common.
A distant cousin from Chile came to do an MBA in Glasgow and turned up with his family in the hotel round the corner from my mother. Though he can't speak a word of Croatian, their third child has my name now, and he is on his way to meet my mother on the island.

My brother works in Chile every year. And soon I will too make that journey across the Atlantic, stand on those glistening shores, in harsh southern light.

In my mind it is sepia, and jewel bright.