myth and memory

When Ivo and I were in Tula, we visited the grave of Dyunyasha. She was a mythical figure who'd protected the city against the Germans, all on her own. The story was that there were so few men fit to fight in the city, but those that could manned the border. Dyunyasha supposedly went into no man's land and worked magic that kept the Germans from invading. As the savior of the city, she was treated as a saint and women and couples visited her, petitioning her for their safety or fertility or marriages. When we visited, we bowed to Dyunyasha the way the other visitors did and i find that I  think of her often.
This Friday, on the first anniversary of my mother's death, we went to see the black Madonna in Einsiedeln. On my way home, I thought about my mother, who's my own personal Dyunyasha. In my memory (and the story I will tell my children) my mother was a savior.
We were on our way home from school one day when an incredible downpour started. Mom encouraged us to embrace it and splash around in it, as we'd no where to go but our warm dry home, but when we were crossing a storm drain tunnel, a young man asked for my mom's help. His friend was trapped in some debris in the fast filling tunnel. And my mom saved that boy.
I have no idea how much of that is true, how fast paced, how mortally dangerous. I only know that my mom helped a boy in a flash flood and I bow to her. My mama Dyunyasha McDonald