Vargas’s Mother Character Analysis

As the Continental Airlines flight left the tarmac, I peeked outside the window. I had heard that my native Philippines, a country of over seven thousand islands, was an archipelago. I didn’t really understand what that meant until I saw the clusters of islands down below, surrounded by water. So much water, embracing so many islands, swallowing me up as the airplane soared through the sky.

What happened to all that love and longing I felt for the family and friends I’d left? Separation not only divides families; separation buries emotion, buries it so far down you can’t touch it. I don’t think I would ever love Mama again in the childlike, carefree, innocent way I loved her while writing that letter. I don’t know where that young boy went.

I ended up watching Lola watch the movie, wondering how much she had given up to come here, how rarely she got to see her own daughter. At that moment, I realized it wasn’t just me who missed my mother—Lola longed for my mama, too. But I was too selfish to want to see it, too absorbed with my own pain.

Without realizing it, I replaced Mama, to whom I barely spoke at the time, with Pat, Sheri, Mary, and Gail. I couldn’t talk to my own mother while I was collecting mother figures.

Sitting on the floor, staring at the boys in the cell, I kept thinking of their parents, the fear they must have felt knowing that they needed to do what they needed to do. I also kept thinking of my mother, wondering as I had so many times over all these years what she told herself as she said good-bye to me at that airport twenty-five years ago.

“Maybe,” Mama said, her voice growing fainter for a moment, “maybe it’s time to come home.”

As the Continental Airlines flight left the tarmac, I peeked outside the window. I had heard that my native Philippines, a country of over seven thousand islands, was an archipelago. I didn’t really understand what that meant until I saw the clusters of islands down below, surrounded by water. So much water, embracing so many islands, swallowing me up as the airplane soared through the sky.

What happened to all that love and longing I felt for the family and friends I’d left? Separation not only divides families; separation buries emotion, buries it so far down you can’t touch it. I don’t think I would ever love Mama again in the childlike, carefree, innocent way I loved her while writing that letter. I don’t know where that young boy went.

I ended up watching Lola watch the movie, wondering how much she had given up to come here, how rarely she got to see her own daughter. At that moment, I realized it wasn’t just me who missed my mother—Lola longed for my mama, too. But I was too selfish to want to see it, too absorbed with my own pain.

Without realizing it, I replaced Mama, to whom I barely spoke at the time, with Pat, Sheri, Mary, and Gail. I couldn’t talk to my own mother while I was collecting mother figures.

Sitting on the floor, staring at the boys in the cell, I kept thinking of their parents, the fear they must have felt knowing that they needed to do what they needed to do. I also kept thinking of my mother, wondering as I had so many times over all these years what she told herself as she said good-bye to me at that airport twenty-five years ago.

“Maybe,” Mama said, her voice growing fainter for a moment, “maybe it’s time to come home.”