November 10, 2012 – After a rough day I just couldn’t do much more than this. I had a hard time thinking today, let alone thinking about a photo to take. I was heading to bed with a cup of tea and wasn’t going to do a photo today at all. But I’ve been trying to find the odd thing to take my mind of what is happening right now, even if just for a few minutes. And as I was heading down the stairs I passed these wooden bullrushes on a ledge in Mom’s house. I took one quick shot, figured if I could do something with it, fine. If not. Oh well. In the end I got something not totally hideous so this is it, it’s all I could find in me.
But it reminds me of an incident that is just so ‘My Mom’.
Years ago, probably back somewhere around the early 1990’s, a few years after I moved to the Coast, Mom and I went out to Art Knapp’s near the airport in Prince George. As we were heading home Mom excitedly asked me to pull over. I did, and she jumped out and was looking happily at the beautiful bullrushes in the ditch. She said she wanted a big bunch to fill a big floor vase and could I please cut some for her?
I dug around in the truck and found a dive knife, and starter to cut some for her. She started seeing specific ones she wanted, often in deep water that required me to balance precariously to reach them, We ended up with a HUGE number and we laughed all the way back to her place. She was tickled with them, and they really did fill that massive urn nicely. She always can seem to talk me into doing just about anything.
And that’s the funny thing about family. When you are needed, you have to find the strength to respond and be there. Or at least you should. But sometimes there are those who don’t always think about others, they are too worried about themselves and how they are impacted, or how they can or can’t deal with a situation, and convince themselves that they aren’t needed, or their presence would cause undue stress. You have family, you didn’t get to choose them, but they belong to you and you to them, and you make every effort to be there for them when they really need you. There are times that you just put everything in an imaginary box, put it on an imaginary shelf, and leave it there until it is forgotten.
This is one of those times.
1 comment