As Sal travels across the United States with her grandparents, Gram and Gramps, and tells them the story of her friend Phoebe, much of her tale is focused on parent-child relationships. When Phoebe’s mother, Mrs. Winterbottom, suddenly disappears, Phoebe is so unwilling to believe that her mother actually wanted to leave that she makes up fantastical stories about her mother being kidnapped and murdered. And as Sal watches Phoebe process her mother’s absence, she realizes that she acted similarly when, a year ago, Momma suddenly left Dad and Sal and died soon after. Sal also spends much of the novel angry with Dad, who made Sal move away from their farm in Kentucky after Momma died. Much of Sal and Phoebe’s anger at their parents seems to stem from their youth and their immaturity. As young people who rely heavily on their parents and are still developing their understanding of the world, it’s inconceivable to them that their parents are flawed people with their own dreams, fears, and eccentricities. But part of growing up, the novel suggests, is accepting that one’s parents are their own people, as well as discovering who one is without one’s parents.
Initially, both Sal and Phoebe are closely connected to their mothers and, in different ways, take their mothers for granted. As Sal describes life before Momma left their family, she refers to herself as Momma’s “mirror.” If Momma was happy, Sal was happy—and if Momma was sad, Sal was also sad. Sal was, in this sense, unable to separate her own emotions—and indeed, her own identity—from her mother’s. Phoebe isn’t as emotionally close with Mrs. Winterbottom, but she clearly takes her mother for granted. Phoebe ignores her mother, speaks rudely to her, and expects her to do things for their family—all of which suggests that she sees Mrs. Winterbottom as a regular, expected fixture in her home. Mrs. Winterbottom is, in Phoebe’s mind, always there with healthy meals, pies, and her ironing board and sewing machine. And while Phoebe tries to push her mother away before Mrs. Winterbottom leaves, her reaction when Mrs. Winterbottom disappears—deciding that Mrs. Winterbottom was kidnapped and throwing herself into rescuing her mother—shows how much she actually loved and relied on her mother.
When Momma and Mrs. Winterbottom leave, Sal and Phoebe are separated from their mothers for the first time—and they lash out in various ways as they navigate this difficult change. Sal, for one, throws tantrums, blames herself for Momma’s departure, and refuses to acknowledge that Momma is dead. In particular, the fact that Sal blames herself for Momma leaving shows how connected Sal feels to Momma. It’s inconceivable, she believes, that Momma chose to leave her only daughter—so in Sal’s mind, it follows that she must’ve done something to cause Momma to want to leave. In a way, Sal lashes out, blames herself, and denies Momma’s death in an attempt to stay close to Momma. Because Sal only briefly alludes to how she behaved after Momma left, readers get a much closer look at how Phoebe grapples with her mother’s absence. Like Sal, much of Phoebe’s angst comes from her unwillingness to consider that Mrs. Winterbottom’s departure might not have anything to do with Phoebe. Instead, Phoebe eventually learns that her mother left because she felt unfulfilled and unappreciated in their family, and because she has a secret: Mrs. Winterbottom had a son whom she gave up for adoption before she met Mr. Winterbottom. For both Sal and Phoebe, accepting that their mothers chose to leave them means that they have to accept that they aren’t the centers of their mothers’ worlds. Their mothers are people too, with their own private dreams and desires outside of their roles as wives and mothers. This is a frightening proposition for both Sal and Phoebe.
Because Mrs. Winterbottom ultimately returns to her family, Phoebe doesn’t have to take the final step that Sal does: figure out who she is without her mother there to guide her. Having been Momma’s “mirror” for so long, Sal struggles for several weeks after Momma leaves to identify and understand her various emotions. It’s a big step for her when, about a month after Momma leaves, Sal suddenly realizes she’s happy, meaning that she can still enjoy her life without Momma. In this way, Sal starts to figure out who she is, and through doing so, starts to come of age. An even bigger indicator that Sal is coming of age is her changing relationship to blackberries. Sal associates blackberries with Momma—Momma loved blackberries, and Sal has a fond memory of watching Momma kiss a tree and leave a blackberry stain on it. For a while after Momma leaves, then, blackberries make Sal sad. However, after Sal kisses Ben, a boy she likes, Ben asks her if she thinks their kiss tasted like blackberries (he’s heard the story of Momma’s “blackberry kiss”). This moment signals a shift in Sal’s identity, as something that once reminded her of Momma is now associated with her growing independence and maturity as she navigates her first romantic relationship. In this way, coming to understand who she is without Momma is an important part of Sal’s personal growth.
With this, Walk Two Moons suggests that children might never fully move away from their parents—it’s implied that Sal will always associate blackberries with Momma, for instance. But as children come of age, they also come to a more nuanced understanding of their relationship with their parents, and most importantly, discover that they can exist—and be happy—without their parent right there beside them.
Related Themes from Other Texts
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Parents, Children, and Growing Up Quotes in Walk Two Moons
From what I could gather, Mr. Winterbottom worked in an office, creating road maps. Mrs. Winterbottom baked and cleaned and did laundry and grocery shopping. I had a funny feeling that Mrs. Winterbottom did not actually like all this baking and cleaning and laundry and shopping, and I’m not quite sure why I had that feeling because if you just listened to the words she said, it sounded as if she was Mrs. Supreme Housewife.
Just then, she came in from the back porch. My father put his arms around her and they smooched and it was all tremendously romantic, and I started to turn away, but my mother caught my arm. She pulled me to her and said to me—though it was meant for my father, I think—“See, I’m almost as good as your father!” She said it in a shy way, laughing a little. I felt betrayed, but I didn’t know why.
It is surprising all the things you remember just by eating a blackberry pie.
One day, about two weeks after she had left, I was standing against the fence watching a newborn calf wobble on its thin legs. It tripped and wobbled and swung its big head in my direction and gave me a sweet, loving look. “Oh!” I thought. “I am happy at this moment in time.” I was surprised that I knew this all by myself, without my mother there. And that night in bed, I did not cry. I said to myself, “Salamanca Tree Hiddle, you can be happy without her.” It seemed a mean thought and I was sorry for it, but it felt true.
Ben touched Phoebe’s arm. She flinched. “Ha,” he said. “Gotcha. You’re jumpy, too, Free Bee.”
And that, too, bothered me. I had already noticed how tense Phoebe’s whole family seemed, how tidy, how respectable, how thumpingly stiff. Was I becoming like that? Why were they like that? A couple times I had seen Phoebe’s mother try to touch Phoebe or Prudence or Mr. Winterbottom, but they all drew back from her. It was as if they had outgrown her.
Had I been drawing away from my own mother? Did she have empty spaces left over? Was that why she left?
“She looked as if she’d been crying. Maybe something is wrong. Maybe something is bothering her.”
“Don’t you think she would say so then?”
“Maybe she’s afraid to,” I said. I wondered why it was so easy for me to see that Phoebe’s mother was worried and miserable, but Phoebe couldn’t see it—or if she could, she was ignoring it. Maybe she didn’t want to notice. Maybe it was too frightening a thing. I wondered if this was how it had been with my mother. Were there things I didn’t notice?
My long hair floated all around me. My mother’s hair had been long and black, like mine, but a week before she left, she cut it. My father said to me, “Don’t cut yours, Sal. Please don’t cut yours.”
My mother said, “I knew you wouldn’t like it if I cut mine.”
My father said, “I didn’t say anything about yours.”
“But I know what you’re thinking,” she said.
“I loved your hair, Sugar,” he said.
I saved her hair. I swept it up from the kitchen floor and wrapped it in a plastic bag and hid it beneath the floorboards of my room. It was still there, along with the postcards she sent.
The morning after my father learned that my mother was not coming back, he left for Lewiston, Idaho. Gram and Gramps came to stay with me. I had pleaded to go along, but my father said he didn’t think I should have to go through that. That day I climbed up into the maple and watched the singing tree, waiting for it to sing. I stayed there all day and on into the early evening. It did not sing.
At dusk, Gramps placed three sleeping bags at the foot of the tree, and he, Gram, and I slept there all night. The tree did not sing.
What I started doing was remembering the day before my mother left. I did not know it was to be her last day home. Several times that day, my mother asked me if I wanted to walk up in the fields with her. It was drizzling outside, and I was cleaning my desk, and I just did not feel like going. “Maybe later,” I kept saying. When she asked me for about the tenth time, I said, “No! I don’t want to go. Why do you keep asking me?” I don’t know why I did that. I didn’t mean anything by it, but that was one of the last memories she had of me, and I wished I could take it back.
On that long day that my father and I left the farm behind and drove to Euclid, I wished that my father was not such a good man, so there would be someone to blame for my mother’s leaving. I didn’t want to blame her. She was my mother, and she was part of me.
In my mini journal, I confessed that I had since kissed all different kinds of trees, and each family of trees—oaks, maples, elms, birches—had a special flavor all its own. Mixed which each tree’s taste was the slight taste of blackberries, and why this was so, I could not explain.
And just like Phoebe, who had waved her mother’s sweater in front of her father, I had brought a chicken in from the coop: Would Mom leave her favorite chicken?” I demanded. “She loves this chicken.”
What I really meant was, “How can she not come back to me? She loves me.”
“So you didn’t leave Gramps just because of the cussing?”
“Salamanca, I don’t even remember why I did that. Sometimes you know in your heart you love someone, but you have to go away before your head can figure it out.”
All through dinner, I kept thinking of Bybanks, and what it was like when we went to my grandparents’ house for dinner. There were always tons of people—relatives and neighbors—and lots of confusion. It was a friendly sort of confusion, and it was like that at the Finneys’ […] Maybe this is what my mother had wanted, I thought. A house full of children and confusion.
It went on and on like that. I hated her that day. I didn’t care how upset she was about her mother, I really hated her, and I wanted her to leave. I wondered if this was how my father felt when I threw all those temper tantrums. Maybe he hated me for a while.
I knew Phoebe was convinced that her mother was kidnapped because it was impossible for Phoebe to imagine that her mother could leave for any other reason. I wanted to call Phoebe and say that maybe her mother had gone looking for something, maybe her mother was unhappy, maybe there was nothing Phoebe could do about it.
When I told this part to Gram and Gramps, Gramps said, “You mean it had nothing to do with Peeby?” They looked at each other. They didn’t say anything, but there was something in that look that suggested I had just said something important. For the first time, it occurred to me that maybe my mother’s leaving had nothing whatsoever to do with me. It was separate and apart. We couldn’t own our mothers.
If there had been a vase, would have squashed it, because our heads moved completely together and our lips landed in the right place, which was on the other person’s lips. It was a real kiss, and it did not taste like chicken.
And then our heads moved slowly backward and we stared out across the lawn, and I felt like the newlY born horse who knows nothing but feels everything.
Ben touched his lips. “Did it taste a little like blackberries to you?” He said.
“They sat there on the bench having a gay old time. If I could toss rocks like you can toss rocks, I’d have plonked them both in the back of the head. Did you notice her hair? She’s cut it. It’s short. And do you know what else she did? In the middle of talking, she leaned over and spit on the grass. Spit! It was disgusting. And the lunatic, do you know what he did when she spit? He laughed. Then he leaned over and he spit.”
“It’s not terrible,” my mother said. “It’s normal. She’s weaning them from her.”
“Does she have to do that? Why can’t they stay with her?”
“It isn’t good for her or for them. They have to become independent. What if something happened to Moody Blue? They wouldn’t know how to survive without her.”
While I prayed for Gram outside the hospital, I wondered if my mother’s trip to Idaho was like Moody Blue’s behavior. Maybe part of it was for my mother and part of it was for me.
In the midst of the still morning, with only the sound of the river gurgling by, I heard a bird. It was singing a birdsong, a true, sweet birdsong. I looked all around and then up into the willow that leaned toward the river. The birdsong came from the top of the willow and I did not want to look too closely, because I wanted it to be the tree that was singing.
