Home, calm, home

Today would have been my mother's 98th birthday. It's been a ten years since she I last held her.

5 years before she died I began to tape some of our conversations. I was trying to capture as much history as she could share. So the tapes are full of Pueblo history and family history. My mom was a great story teller - she had the capacity for telling a tale, again and again, and then telling them again, with almost the same phrase or intonation as she shared the stories.

I couldn't bring myself to listen to the tapes. I was dreading hearing her voice because I would miss her too much. I was afraid it would be too painful.

I felt I was bold when I pressed the play button on the boom-box in my home office. My mother's voice and my laughter filled the room. The batteries must have been running low as she was being taped - the voice that I heard sounded like Minnie Mouse. Even in death my mother was making me laugh. Pretty good gift for her to give me, no?

I took this picture last Friday. The weather and lighting was the sort Mom, with her Colorado roots, would have enjoyed. It would have brought a smile to her sweet face. Both the color of the house and my memories of my mom leave me with calm feelings.