My Instead: I visited my mom and gave her one of my photos of a country road.
Time was running out for me to do my “instead” for the day. Then
it dawned on me that I had not given my mom any of my photos from the Holiday
Boutique event. At the age of almost 87, Mom doesn’t need or want stuff anymore
to just set around her house. But then I remembered how she really liked and
complimented my photography I had on display at the boutique.
I decided I was going to go out on a limb here and take her one of
my photos as a “for no reason” gift. Since she was raised as a country girl on
her dad’s farm, I chose the picture of a country road that I had taken in
Wisconsin while visiting a friend there. I surprised Mom with my knock on the
door and entered with my little gift bag. I presented it to her saying that I
know she doesn’t like “stuff” setting around but that this was different. Lo and behold, she loved the photo!
Then something unusual happened…she began sharing untold stories from her years of
living on the farm.
She spoke of riding her brother’s bike down the country road to her
neighbor’s house. She was 17. She reminisced about sitting on their porch in the
darkness, hearing their radio inside and listening to the ceremony of when the peace
treaty was signed to end Word War II on September 2, 1945. Yes, she remembered the date. She talked about the
time she and her friend Vivian were confronted by a stranger while walking home
from school on Route 159. They refused his request to give them a ride. She remembered her
abusive grandmother beating her head against the wall in the kitchen…right
where it was especially jagged. Awful, but true. She shared about getting
ready to leave a dance in Collinsville with two of her girlfriends and
then discovering that all the buses going back to Belleville’s square had left! Two
young men offered them a ride. She and her friends surmised, "There were
three of us and only two of them". They could “take ‘em” if it came to
that. They were safely delivered to the public square where they took a cab
home for a dollar.
Never hearing any of these stories before, I was blown away. Had
this one simple photo of a country road evoked all these memories? It could have
had something to do with it. Also, Mom quilts on Wednesdays so she always seems
to be in a better mood and ready to chat after spending the day with her
quilting ladies. Regardless of why, I was amazed and ecstatic that she shared
all this with me. My “instead” for the day paid off…and it spoke in volumes.
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| Mom admiring her "country road" |
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| And now this photo is "setting around" right where it should be! |
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