Road Trip Day 5: In Her Lifetime

Love is an ocean without shores. You have to jump in, never to come back...This isn't a path for cautious people.
--K Singh

Today is my mother's 91st birthday. She's requested it to be a low key day, as lots of family was here over the weekend and we started celebrating early with that big dinner 2 days ago. The big event of the day is that Chick, a very sweet neighbor and mother's "beau" is taking her and what remains of the family out to dinner this evening.

The day was slow, allowing a leisurely swim in the late morning with her at the clubhouse, followed by a nap and down time for the rest of us.

I marvel at what my mother has seen in her 91 years. Born in 1919 and raised in New Harmony, Utah, my mother's family travelled by horse and was the first to have a car and a radio. She remembers when the first telephone came in with operators, party lines and the like. When she entered Jr. High her family moved to St. George, a larger town about an hour down the road so she could continue school, She met my father when she was 15 and married him when she was 22, just as he was leaving for World War II. Accompanied by her parents, she took a train cross country to Muskogee, Oklahoma and they were married by a justice of the peace before he deployed.

Without TV, all the communications she would get were letters that were weeks old and newsreels at least that old, shown in the local theater. She tells of a certain newsreel that came into town and my father was spotted in a section. All the folks that came that day wanted to see Evan Pickett again and that section of the reel was played several times before continuing on.

Gratefully, my father returned from Germany, Italy, Africa, the South Pacific, and Korea-- I was born 10 years after my sister, after 4 miscarriages during the time they were overseas. She outlived him and has outlived most of her friends, which in my book takes a lot of courage, especially if your're in pain and your health is declining.

Later, air and space travel came in with records, television, cassette and video tapes, CD's and DVDs ,after that. Then the internet, cell phones, ipods and all the other wonders of modern day communication.

Back to the birthday.

We all had a nice dinner, came home for cake and ice cream, but had to depart soon for my sister's motel room where a time and a computer had been set up to visit with my son in Iraq via live video camera on "Skype". It was 11 at night and with a 9 hour time difference, David had just gotten up the next day, half a world away. Mother adores all her grandchildren, but he is probably the closest to her of all of them as he had stayed with his grandma when he was completing the first part of his college education at Dixie State College in St. George, Utah. Although living with her can be tough, David did an admirable job. It's a time both of them will never forget.

The video signal was a little fuzzy, but we heard and saw my son loud and clear and he was able to talk to all of us, especially my mother, for about 20 minutes. She was absolutely overjoyed at the opportunity and was wired late into the night, long after the visit ended.

"Well, did that make your day?", I asked when we were walking back to the car.

"Oh, it made my WHOLE LIFE!", she responded. I think her day ended with the best gift yet.

I hope she's still with us when he comes home in 11 months. It would make HIS year away, if she is.