The dogwood tree by our bedroom window had a rough summer. It hardly ever rained and we didn’t water it. It is already losing its leaves and instead of turning a beautiful red it just went brown. This tree on Dewberry Street must have an arborist as a caretaker or maybe it’s all the sunshine.
We took my mom down to the lobby of the Friendly Home where we had a cup of black coffee and clinked our plastic cups to National Coffee Day. We looked at old family pictures on my iPad. I have to skip over some because my mom starts to cry. Shirley Zimmer, a high school classmate of mine and a member of the Pittsford Art Group, was hanging her pictures in the gallery so we chatted with her for a while. She has a series of paintings there of funky motels, many from the Adirondack Mountains.
One of the residents in my mom’s place has a way of weaving me into her life. I start by just saying hello to her and then she has me responsible for not letting her go to her room or today, she had me in charge of the next bell choir performance. Earlier this week I looked up one of her relatives, someone she was referring to in a free ranging conversation. His name was Henry Ward Morgan and I showed her the entry I found. She said he was her grandfather and she read every word on the page. Before I could get my iPad back I had become one of his descendants, a member of her family on a part of the tree that has long since departed this world.
1 Comment
Your stories of the visits to the home are so beautifully done. I wish you would put them together in a small book, along with the photos. It would be so gorgeous. The gentle ones in particular. xL