Priorities rethought, innocence found again.
My Mom has had a rough four months. Hip replacement surgery followed by major back surgery. And we had to put her dog Skipper down before the surgery marathon. With Mom not being able to drive, I've been doing double duty for a bit. But, there have been wonderful, and poignant times.
While waiting during Mom's back surgery, I noticed a little girl looking at the aquarium in the reception/waiting area at Southdale Fairview Hospital. She never said a word. She was so intently watching the fish silently pass by her eyes. And I had to catch this pure innocence with my cheap phone camera:
And I decided to always carry a digital camera to be able to get much better photos than are obtainable with a phone camera.
I never saw her face. She left on her grandfather's lap as he was pushed to the door in his wheelchair. But, she was the picture of what, besides a relationship with Christ, is important.
A few weeks later my Mom was at a transitional care facility. She asked me if I'd wash one of her favorite outfits as it had taken on the aroma of her former hospital room. Well, I had washed one of her outfits after she had hip replacement surgery and put her lip balm through a thorough cleaning cycle (thankfully rescuing it before I put it through the dryer). Vowing not to do that again, this time I went through her pockets. As I was pulling out her ever present lip balm (this one being new, not reconditioned) and tissues, it occurred to me, that fifty years ago, she would have been going through my jeans pockets before washing them. And here I was doing the very same thing for her a half century later. And it gave me cause for pause as I looked at the tissue and the lip balm that I'd just put aside. It reminded me of a poem Mom gave me a few years back after Dad had died. The author was an older woman getting out of a car. As she opened the door, her adult son reached out to take her hand to help her. And she thought of the time when her son, as a little boy would reach up for her hand as he stepped up on a curb. And now the roles had become reversed. And she was relying on him.
And a tube of lip balm and a few tissues brought that idea home to me for good.
posted by Amendment X at 1:18 PM permalink
1 Comments:
Amendmentx saw you last comment on the anti-strib Post to Harold about the Indian history lesson You sir are a person I would like to have a chat with. You seem to remeber history rather well as to your reference to concord bridge as you have no contact information on the blog here I will let you decide how you would like to do this that is if you are willing to . You can find my email on my Blog under my profile here
http://flagwasstillthere.com/
or if you wish you could leave information here for me to contact you, or just tell me to buzz off as you wish
tim
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