I've said before that April is brown. This year, May is starting out pretty brown, as well. However, the stands of willows growing in the ditches provide some startling red colo(u)r, if you stop to look at them.The blurry white things in this photo are snowflakes. Happy May.
If my mother were still alive, she'd be 91 today. The eighth anniversary of her death comes later this week. And Mother's Day is next weekend. A trifecta of remembrance in early May.
She died the kind of death that some would call a blessing. I prefer to call her death a release, if it must be called anything other than a death.
It was her life that was the blessing. She was intelligent and driven, with a tendency to speak and meddle when biting her tongue and stepping back would have been more polite, but less honest. She didn't suffer fools gladly, a trait in a teacher that wins respect, not adoration, from students. It's also, sadly, one of the traits I inherited and it consistently gets me into trouble because often the most foolish person of all turns out to be me.
She was ambitious, inventive, and creative. When she got a good idea that "someone" should do, she often ended up being that "someone." She loved things that were true and beautiful--not necessarily things that were pretty, and certainly nothing cheap but flashy.
She was generous and very supportive of my so-called career. She loved buying me suits to wear to job interviews or to work. I thought of her during my recent trip to Tucson, where I bought a suit that was expensive but fits like a dream. She'd have loved that. However, she believed in building character, even when her children became adult-aged, so she would have forced me to choose just one of the blouses that went with this fabulous suit. In my ongoing attempts to outgrow elements of my upbringing, I bought all three, and a couple of sweaters, too. Fortunately, the beeping cash register drowned out her voice in my head, saying "Extravagant!"
But of course, every day I am grateful to her for hanging onto this land, our family's heritage where I have the good fortune to live. Even though she could afford to be here only three weeks most summers, it was important to her to do that much. And fortunately, my father understood her need to do that and made it part of his life, too. And so, luckily, here I am.
Because no matter how brown, gray, rainy, snowy, windy--just plain nasty--the weather can get, there is no place in the world I'd rather be. There are always willows, if you just know where to look.
