Travels Through Aqua, Green, and Blue: A Memoir by Mary E. Gregory – Review by Roxsanne Lesieur.

Travels Through Aqua, Green, and Blue: A Memoir by Mary E. Gregory
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the story of Mary E. Gregory told in her own words, it is the story of how her world changed when she was just five years old and what happened over the course of her life after that. Mary was born into a loving family in Nashville, Tennessee, she had her mum, her dad and two siblings, a brother who was the oldest and an older sister in between the two. They were well thought of and respected in the local community but from birth, Mary had challenges, she was born with a cleft palate and had multiple surgeries over her life to correct it and the issues which came with it, this would be something she would have to accept and learn to live with over the years. The main troubles started when her father, a preacher in the local church and a pillar of the community came out as gay, this was compounded upon with the HIV and AIDS crises which were starting to come into the mainstream media and create the stigma and taboos around the diseases ehich people believes they could catch just by standing near them. The life that Mary knew was going to change drastically after this as her parents separated and divorced, the church goers and friends of the family all retreated away from them and some started rumours and talking about the family behind their backs, it was also at this point that her mother started to develop mental health issues as well.

After the divorce went through, Mary and her siblings didn’t see their father for a while until the custody and maintenance payments were sorted out, it was during this time that their mother retreated into herself and began neglecting the household and them, her older brother had to grow up quickly and look after both himself and his sisters, trying to keep them going to school on time and not letting on how bad things were at home. The situation got to a point where the school called their mum and it finally broke through the wall she had built around herself and she started booking after things again, however, when the car broke down it started over again, plus when they got to see their father, she started arguments and it became too awkward for the arrangements to stick. Their mothers increased paranoia around the situation and what she believed people were saying about her she began to use her children to wage a war against their father, this led to her buying a car, packing them into it and driving away from the only home they had ever known without looking back.

On their road trip, they visited family members to say a last goodbye to them and in between staying in rest stops, spending the little money they had on food and gas, they passed through many places until they arrived in New York where the next stage of their adventures would be. This is where Mary and the others learned about life and how hard they would have to work to stay fed, warm and with a roof over their heads, sometimes this didn;t happen at all, they shuffled from hostels, to hotels, to apartments and back to sleeping in the car, going to food banks and soup kitchens so they could eat and their mother hopping from job to job between welfare checks, the had to attend school, even though it was hard for them and embarrassing, but they made some friends along the way.

The memoir continues as they keep moving along when their mother;s paranoia hits its peak, Mary learns a lot about life and how she should approach it and scattered in between the memories are snippets of her adult life and how she has grown and changed into the woman she is today. Overall, this is a wonderful story of adversity and how even childhood trauma can be used to create a strong sense of self, while teaching others how to observe, process and learn from life, no matter what it throws at you.

Reviewed by @roxsannel

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