Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Throughout the book, Mo continually writes little messages to her "upstream mother," her term for the birth mother she's never known. Mo places them in bottles and sends them down the creek with the hopes that one day her mother will find them and come to claim her:
"Dear Upstream Mother,
Miss Retzyl claims my vast experience in discovering where you're not helps me zero in on you. But frankly, my map can't hold many more pushpins. Neither can my heart. Eleven years is a long time to search. Drop me a line or pick up the phone. I'm on the verge of puberty.
Mo" (3.27)
Okay, so clearly Mo's lugging around a serious desire to reconnect with her roots—otherwise she wouldn't write so often, or have done so for so long. Even though she has Miss Lana and the Colonel, Mo worries that she doesn't have a "real" family and that she doesn't belong in Tupelo Landing like everyone else in her community. Thing is, in always looking beyond Tupelo Landing, Mo fails to recognize just how much she has right where she is. She has family, friends, a good home—truth be told, there's little finding her birth mother can offer her that she doesn't have already.
Don't get us wrong: We're not trivializing Mo's desire to find her birth mom and see what that lady's all about. It's just that Mo's sense of not belonging in Tupelo Landing is created far more by Mo and her investment in finding her birth mom than it is the reality of her life there. Mo is one loved kid.
In the end, Mo decides that she doesn't care that her messages have gone unanswered, making it clear she's finally let go of all her anxiety about fitting in. She accepts that she's a part of this community and this family, realizing just how much goodness already surrounds her. Yay.