Monday Poetry Train #66

I don't have it in me to do poetry right now, having just received the news that my 77 year old mother has fallen and broken her hip and will be having surgery around noon today.

So I'm going to do a little photo essay with some of the pics of my Mom I have on my hard drive. I don't seem to have any more recent than August of 2005 from the last family reunion 7 weeks before my Dad died. I'll post the reunion pics below since I've not posted most of them before but for the other pics I'm just going to include the links to the two photo essays I did featuring Mom this past year.

Click here for the photo essay with poem that I did for Mother's Day.

Click here for the photo essay of Mom's life which I did for her birthday last January.

Please send blessings to the surgeon's hands and mind that they be steady and sure.


This is my Mom and Dad on their wedding day, August 7, 1955. It was a double wedding with her twin sister but I don't have a picture including both couples.

Below are the two couples about a week before their 50th anniversary. This was the last one for both couples as my Dad died September 24th and my Aunt (in the polka dot blouse) the week after Thanksgiving. Both after several years battling cancer.


The twins Maurine and Margaret
My parents on a different day of that same reunion. We spent a three-day weekend in a vacation house near Bend Oregon.

Mom and Dad on the road towards Bend that week.

>>>>>>>>>>
OK now that is beginning to look and feel like a memorial and I don't want to leave it with a morbid tone. So I'm going to tell the story of how Mom fell. She (77 mind you) was showing off to her big sister Catherine how she exercises with her balance ball. I'm not clear what move she was demonstrating but it involved a chair and since this was at Catherine's house in Rocklin California, it wasn't the chair Mom was used to using and something went wrong. Catherine says she fell hard and then couldn't get up.

Now I guess to those who don't know my Mom that doesn't sound amusing but my sister could not erase the amusement in her tone as she told the story to me on the phone. I hope we are still able to feel the amusement a few days from now.

My sister reminded me that Mom is a trooper and told how she had learned of Mom's fall of 2001 when she tripped on some stairs exiting a building and broke her knee. She had called Carri from the hospital and broke the news with a perky "Guess what?" Like a kid about to announce her acceptance on the cheerleader squad.

I could not help but remember when she allowed herself to be coaxed onto a the neighbor boy's skateboard when I was about nine and then fell and broke her elbow. She had to wear a sling and was not allowed to lift my baby sister--then about 9 or 10 months--I learned to fold diapers and change them that spring, among other things to do with laundry and meal prep and housework.

The point being: my Mom loves to tell these stories ever after. Not as from the woe-is-me standpoint but from the 'let me tell you about my wonderful adventure'. Here's hoping she is telling this story in her perky, bright-eyed wonder-filled voice this time next year.

They were supposed to pick me up on their way back through the Rogue Valey on next Monday and I was planning to spend a couple weeks with them and continue work on scanning the family photos into my computer in preparation for creating a digital ablbum for the entire extended family. I started this project last December and that is where most of the pictures in the photo essays I linked to above came from. The reunion pics on this page came from my sister-friend Jamie's cell phone.

Assuming all goes well, it is still unlikely Mom will be able to travel by car inside of two weeks so I probably won't be going up there to visit until after Christmas now. Since Ed wants me here for Christmas. Which is only fair since his family celebrates Xmas and mine does not.