Jonathan Livingston Seagull and My Mom?

I always wondered why mom wore this huge, horrid, and ugly medallion. Of course, I knew it was because she had read the Novella and must have liked something in the words. She must have found comfort in the self-help, self-centered, and self-searching prose. And since my mom died too early in our lives, I still want to know what was she was like. Foolishly, I waited too long to ask her myself.

Some of the things she loved made sense. She loved John Denver. I mean, that's a no-brainer; whom does not? She loved Constant Comment tea, though I didn't understand why on earth she had to have it for her every-morning commute to Friends Home...in her orange Volkswagen Rabbit...with a manual transmission...and a permanent tea puddle/stain on the dashboard. I'd think, Mom, can't you gulp that shit before you leave? Naturally, I can't leave the house in the morning without a cup of coffee, but I rock the newfangled automatic velocitransmorgrifier.


Anyway, thinking I could visit with my Mom again, I found an online copy, downloaded and printed it and settled down to see how a woman my age, or even younger than I at that time in the '70s when the book was all the rage, could fall in love with what was inside. And presently, I have only the faintest idea.


She was a Christian. A Quaker and a Presbyterian, she sang in the choir at our church, so maybe she was drawn by the allegorical hints though Jon says he isn't a Messiah, and in fact, the whole thing might be considered an atheist's handbook. It preaches individuality.


And that might have been what she was grasping for. Never minding the hints of immortality the story invokes, reminding me of Slaughterhouse Five's meander through time, maybe mom wanted to be the gull that flew higher to see further.

I know when I looked up on my coffee-spilling commute by the reservoir lakes of Greensboro, NC and saw a single gull gliding overhead I immediately thought of my Mom and this book which I had never read. And when I got home, I went to the medallion, the hermetically sealed coin with the quote "You have the freedom to be yourself...here and now," and promptly read the story.


And I guess that's the take away notion from the whole thing. I reckon that's what Mom was thinking when she'd put this giant thing around her neck. But for me, when I hold the necklace, of course I think of mom, but also, now I think how she didn't want to just know "how to get from shore to food and back again."