Patti Gibbons Art

I intended to be writing more, but I have to admit, I have been putting my energy into my granddaughter the past 10 days.  This is the third year that we take Alanna for two weeks in the summer, and indulge her in every experience that we possibly can.  I joke that her social life is better than mine, which means we move like twisters. We swim a lot as we are graced to know many people with pools, a necessary respite on hot summer days when you don't have A/C.  We've also watched the first three Harry Potter movies, and just borrowed the next three from a friend. I am hoping that one of us will take her to see the last one in 3D before she goes. I was not the perfect parent.  I loved my kids, but I was a stressed single mom who had no money, worked and went to  college to get my BS and MS so that I could have a good job with benefits to support my kids.  There price for that often took its toll in ways that make me wince.  Short tempered, always ...

"If there were nothing else to trouble us, the fate of the flowers would make us sad. " John Lancaster Spalding It had been too long since I had visited my mother in the nursing home; each weekend I  would make excuses to myself as to why I couldn't go...  I was on vacation.  I was recovering from vacation.  School started.  I was tired.  It was too cloudy-windy-rainy-sunny outside. The reality is, it is difficult to see her trapped within her bed, listen to the litany of aches and pains that she mumbles as soon as I walk in, barely audible with her slurred post-stroke speech.  I dread and cringe at the endless screeching of the old folks who have lost their minds and moan/cry/wail up and down the hallways of the home in their wheel chairs.  I close the door as they try to barge into my mother's room when I am visiting, like zombies. I ache because they too were once vital. What precipitated the visit today was the call ...