Monday, May 22, 2017

much much closer


This is not the Von Trapp children posing in the Austrian alpine.
It's a picture taken high atop Mount Cook and includes my mom and dad perched on the edge of splendor.

Isn't the composition of this photo a rare and wondrous thing?
Aren't the teenagers framed just right?
Don't they look like some lifestyle photographer had a vision?
Doesn't my dad have a bad case of hat hair?

Maybe it's just because my mother is smiling warmly from the center of the photo's foreground that it occurs to me the photographer got the focal point just right.
And, I noticed something for the first time tonight.
My dad is holding my Mom's hand.
He hasn't turned to face the picture taker.
His thoughts are somewhere else.
Somewhere much, much closer.

Saturday, May 20, 2017

birds come

We have a plum tree smack dab in the center of our front yard. It was a slender slip of a tree when we first planted it a decade ago but now has branches stout and aplenty. Birds come.
"Look," my husband says, pointing. A house sparrow twitters as it scrambles higher in the branches.
"Is that a Vireo," I ask incredulously as a slender olive-grey bird flutters on a low limb.
"A Tanager!" we gasp in unison.
And then, out of the top of the tree like a girl from a cake, pops a Robin.
A United Nations of birds.

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

can't live without

My four year old granddaughter began to cough one evening last week and by morning, was struggling to breathe.
She couldn't draw in a breath.
She couldn't even cry.
The Hospital Emergency Ward rolled out the red carpet.
She was ushered right in and given a bed and oxygen.
Breathing is one of those essentials.
You can't live without breath.
My little granddaughter had her own list of things she couldn't live without.

My daughter recorded her settling down to sleep with her phone;
A comforting picture for those at home.
They lay snuggled together on the hospital bed, mommy and little girl.
"I love you Mommy,' Little says sleepily.
"I love you too. Try to go to sleep now," urges my daughter.
"It's not dark enough," Little laments.
"And I can't live without all my toys and stuffies........and I can't live without......" Here she taps thoughtfully on her lower lip. "And I can't live without my lipstick." (AKA Chapstick)