A Visit from Mom

By G. E. Shuman

          For the past week, my family and I have been enjoying a summer visit from my mom. Mom stays with us for a week or so each summer and then moves on to Maine to visit two of my sisters and their families who live there. This time of year, she flies to the North from her home in sunny Florida, avoiding both that state’s very hot summers and our very cold winters. She is a smart lady.

          She’s also an amazing lady. You might remember from a previous article or two my mentioning that my wife and I have both recently retired. This means that we’re not exactly newlyweds or teenagers anymore. This also means that my mom isn’t either. (I think she needed to be born several years before me to be able to give birth to me, but I’m no doctor.) In support of this idea, last February she celebrated her 95^th birthday. Her party was a blast! I was there and I actually have pictures of her at that party, playing the bongos and doing the limbo (Not at the same time, but let’s give her a break.) while her younger guests were sitting around eating cake! Last December she was also seen sitting on Santa’s lap, and just two years ago was caught on my sister in law’s Harley, helmet and all!

          Mom lives by herself in her own home, although a few male suitors have recently attempted to change that. She was driving her car until a few months ago and still makes her yearly flights north and south, by herself. (Just between you and me, I think she likes that the airports have her use a wheelchair. They take her right to her gate and she’s always the first one on and off the plane.) Like I said, she’s a smart lady.

          This amazing woman lives on coffee, donuts, hotdogs, etcetera, (She’s not exactly a health food nut.) and always has a whole drawer full of chocolate in her kitchen for those male suitors to get into when they visit. (She is often teased that her REAL boyfriend is named Russell Stover.) Mom loves a breakfast of eggs, toast, and home fries at almost any “old-fashioned diner” as she calls them. (We’ve visited The Wayside twice this week. Great food!) With all of this, she amazes her doctors with her low blood sugar, perfect blood pressure, great cholesterol levels, and general good health. Amazing!

          To me, most of all and best of all is my Mom’s great attitude and outlook on life. Those things are probably why she is still going strong. Although her body is in constant pain from arthritis, her mind is as sharp as a tack. Despite her pain, Mom will always have a smile for you. She tells perfect strangers how good God has been to her, and always finds the good in others, too. Looking on the bright side doesn’t seem to be a choice to her, it is a way of life. I wish I was more like her.

          Readers, I know this has been a personal column, and I hope you understand why I chose to write it. I mean sincerely that if we were all a bit more like my mom the world would be a much better place. Besides, it’s hard to not brag when you have just been visited by the best mother on the planet.

          I love you Mom. Please come to Vermont again soon!

         

Birds, Bees, and Dandelions

By G. E. Shuman

          So, several days ago my nearly three-year-old granddaughter Nahla and I went on a great explore up the sidewalk of a nearby street. We do this often on sunny spring and summer days. Nahla dons her bunny, which is a stuffed toy that she wears on her back. The bunny has little straps that buckle at Nahla’s front and a long one with a loop at the other end, that Papa, (that’s me) puts around his wrist.  The strap keeps the bunny safe and stops him from hopping out into the street.

          On this explore, on that particular day several days ago, the three of us, (Nahla, Papa, and bunny) discovered many wonderful things, as we always do. There were trees with big green leaves, and birds and bees to see. There were, also, all manner of tiny crawling things minding their own business on that sidewalk, completely unaware that some of them would soon be dispatched from this world by the intentional smack of a toddler’s well-placed sandal.

          One way to tell for certain that warmer weather is finally here, here in the Green Mountain state, is the arrival of a young child’s favorite flowers that have spread and blossomed all over the lawns that line the edge of our special sidewalk, and, probably, yours. The golden blossoms of all those dandelions are, truly, gold to a toddler as she gathers as many as will fit in her small hands, gifts, wilted or otherwise, that Mom and Grammy will receive when our explore is over.

          There is ‘another’ flower, or at least a completely different looking flower, a lofty, fluffy-ticklish one inhabiting those same lawns. For some reason, my granddaughter is almost innately aware, as are millions of other toddlers, that if you pick one of these white, feathery things you can blow on it and something wonderful will happen. This flower’s seedlings will loft to the air, ‘like the down of a thistle’ as one old story describes a different occurrence, on an adventure, an explore, of their own. The tiny seeds, which some believe, even with their ingenious method of propagation, are the products of mere chance, will drift away, each on its own little, organic-down parachute attached by a thin stem.  They all will land and some will find their way into the soil.

          Those things are the only hope of this flower’s species, and they seem very adept at succeeding in their task, especially at this time of the summer. All future generations of them will, someday, blossom into Nahla’s ‘other’, yellow flowers. The early greens of some may be picked and eaten. Many will live to become the fluffy ones which will be spread further into the future by another year’s breezes, or excitedly plucked by some of my grandchildren’s-grandchildren’s generation and blown on out onto the wind. Thank you, Nahla, for spreading the gold.