Feet

Danticat remembers her relationship with her mother as it was--fragile and in flux, but still filled with love. Danticat says that "If [my mother and I] had a symbol, it was our feet" (166). Danticat goes on to explain that "there was a kind of fragility" to her relationship with mother: because of the years they spent apart, their relationship was always in flux, never completely stable. In this way, their relationship was like feet walking: always making up for lost time, never standing still or achieving complete stability. Danticat reveals that when her mother was dying she "kept taking cell phone pictures of her feet" (166).

Prayer

Danticat uses prayer as a way of expressing grief and maintaining her relationship with her mother, even after her mother's death. At the end of "Circles and Circles of Grief," Danticat includes a prayer, which Danticat wrote, although Danticat writes from...