I just got off the phone talking to my parents. What gems they are. My mother is one of my best friends, if not the best. She has the gift of turning every negative into a positive, such a refreshing change and a much needed quality. How she stays positive is what I think I admire so much about her. Both my parents are in their mid 84 with fairly serious health issues. My father lost his hearing in WWII in one ear and has lived since with tinnitus and has a variety of aging problems, but I swear, nothing gets them down.
My poor mother suffers from Macular Degeneration and is nearly blind. I can't imagine the frustration of nothing being able to get around my own or worrying about missing a step and falling. Yet she handles it with grace, dignity and her ever-present humor. She still loves to "read" her books on tape where we can talk about what we each liked or disliked about the story. Both of our favorite have always been the historical novels.
I'm bless to have her in my life. It's a joy to talk to her, and I usually find myself laughing so hard I have tears running down my face as she recounts the never before told tale of Edith, the odd cousin who would hide behind the sofa when people would come over. Tonight she told me about her days of selling War Bonds in Northern California. Man, for a good girl, she got around. She was always dating soldiers either on leave or home from the war. At 18, She loved to date, but knew she was too young to get serious with any one man.
Inevitably, they would fall in love and my mother as she told me, never wanting to hurt their feelings would have to find some way out of the relationship. In a letter to her father, they both came up with a sure fire idea. When my mother's boyfriends were becoming too serious, she would write my grandfather and he would in turn write her back as a long lost boyfriend. Each letter he changed his name. Some times he was Claude the door to door fuller brush sales man with bad knee, and a mother with 18 cats or Ruffus, the Assistant ice rink manager who lost his sister in a tragic ice fishing accident. When my mother opened her "romantic letter" in front of her love besotted suitor, she never knew what story my grandfather was going to tell or how odd/silly it was going to get.
I guess that's where I get my love of story telling. Thanks for the laugh mom! I wish you could blog, you'd love it!
I feel we are kindred spirits - I, too love story telling and am sure I've gotten it from my parents - my father was a newspaper journalist and editor and my mother was a buyer for a chain of bookstores. They both have numerous health issues and my mother, like yours, is losing her sight to macular degeneration. And her sense of humor is still delicious. Just yesterday, I took her to the eye doctor, who asked at one point if she was still driving (!) She laughed and said, "Driving? I can't even see the car!"
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