The Memory Bowl

I want to go see my mom and dad this weekend!!  Meri is coming with me.  

IF she feels better.  She came home from work sick yesterday.  Those daycare kids spread the WORST illnesses...  

So if I don't come down with it, (I avoided her like the plague...) and she's better, then we'll go.  I pretty much threw the over-the-counter meds to her along with the 7-UP and ginger ale and said, "GET BETTER!"  

Mama!  (She calls me that lately) won't you cuddle with me??  

nope.

I was talking to someone the other day and felt like they were cutting me down.  

"I don't take pictures because I want to live in the moment and remember how it was in real life."  

said they.

Well, GOOD for them! :\

  I didn't justify myself at the time because when someone acts holier-than-thou, I get kind of floored and stunned a bit.

And three days later, I'm able to come up with a response...

I guess I take pictures, because my mom has dementia and can't remember those two months when I moved into the garage attic for my freshman year at college because I wanted the "live away from home" experience.  I moved back into the house when it got too cold and after I discovered that bats liked it up there too.

She gets mixed up as to who lived in which house.  I was born when we lived in the blue house with the basement Dad dug out from under it, while we were still living in it.  And when he smoked. and the tree in the back yard where Mark built a treehouse and the branches made a little sink which was perfect for mudpie creations where they forked.  And the made for the toboggan hill in the back!  And we had Lassa, the dog, that got hit by a car.  And the swimming pool that had the big wooden spool for a deck and we would make the current go so fast and then one day we pushed the side over and flooded the yard.  And playing Duck When Cars Come in the ditch.

Mom doesn't remember much of those things.

And now I can't remember who told me that little braggadocios bit the other day,  

so I'm taking pictures, darn it!

Someday, likely, I won't be able to remember those big or little things either.  And photos will be all I'll have to remember the various events of my life and those of the ones I love.  

If you didn't capture it on film, it didn't happen.

No wonder Mom kept multiple baskets of photos tucked under her bed and around the house.

Oh dear... *sob* I better get to work on those scrap books!

AND make more of these blog posts into a book.

2009 is done so far...