Mothers' Day bouquets, and vivid colors in the sky

May 12, 2024

Wildflowers and sage near Sprague Lake in Adams County

A mother says goodbye

It is a blessing that when my mother Joan (pronounced Jo-ann) told me she was leaving it was in the very best way. We were in her bathroom where I was caring for her. It was a few days before Christmas, 2019. I asked her if it was time to get up. It was time. But she just couldn’t do it. She looked me directly in the eyes, shook her head gently from side to side, and then she smiled.

The look on her face, in her eyes, said it all, and it was a silent, soulful way to say ‘it has been wonderful to be here with you, but I can’t be here any more.’ There had been signs. Though her father had passed in 1977, she thought he was still alive, and waiting for her in Pasco. Increasingly she was struggling with her mobility. Increasingly she asked to be taken to Pasco.

I somehow got her back to her robo-chair in the living room, and then called a hospice nurse. An adjustable bed came. She passed a few days later. The last time I saw her alive I’d rejoiced that she’d swallowed some water from a flexible straw. In reply, she smiled and rolled her shoulders in a wave, like she was dancing a samba. Such a graceful way to leave.

I’m celebrating the last hours of Mother’s Day (today) with two large bunches of lavender lilacs, just the kind I would usually deliver to her in person on this day. I associate the lilacs with the enormous lilac hedge in the front yard of her childhood home in Pasco. Mom was kind enough to let me sing to her and with her. I so miss that. It was a kick, to sing with her.

In present tense, I lament that I’ve not had much time to be out in nature with my cameras this spring. Since I returned from Tacoma and Denver (April) I’ve been trying to get back in shape so I can swim, again, this summer in our beautiful and strong river. There are fish I need to meet. But, as I get my wind back, my daily bike has usually been a scripted route along the Centennial Trail, an outing that consumes an hour, wedged among other hours.

My dear friend Ana lives in the Southwest so she was out of range for the expected celestial light show this weekend. She nudged me to try to photograph the aurora that lit up the skies this weekend, and send her a picture. So I did.

Friday night I drove north of Reardan to a place I knew would be unusually dark. It was so dark I struggled just to orient myself and set up a tripod I haven’t used at all this year. I’d never seen the Northern Lights in color before (the only other time, a few years ago, it just looked like god had spilled her milk). Not so Friday night, as many of you can attest. It seemed so surreal, like a dream. This is what the sky looked like from where I was, looking up at the Big Dipper, the solar wind creating a huge, electric flower in the magnetosphere.

Onward, to the swallows…

Saturday night, was cloudless but, alas, no sign of the northern lights, just a waxing crescent moon to the west. So I came home at midnight. I woke up with some energy this morning and decided to challenge myself, a bit. I’d been putting off a long (for me) bike ride I got used to doing last spring, from downtown up to the rimrock above the Bowl & Pitcher west of town, where I’m learning to photograph violet-green swallows in flight.

Female Violet-green swallow swooping around her mate in the rimrock this morning.

It’s one of those things, where you can’t really appreciate how colorful the swallows are unless one of them knocks himself itself out colliding with a window, or you can freeze one in flight with the high-speed blink of a camera shutter. Of course, the idea is to do this without dropping the camera, or worse, falling with the camera off the cliff(s) that the swallows nest in and swoop and glide through with breath-taking speed. It’s a ten mile bike ride, as the crow flies, to get there and back, with some testing hills along the way to and from. It was worth the trip, and and once I was there I found it hard to leave my perch above the Bowl & Pitcher. It’s a beautiful spot, the work is exciting, and the birds are amazing.

I was surprised when I was cleaning out my parents belongings after mom passed to find a picture of her from 1954 at the Bowl & Pitcher. I knew she and my dad had honeymooned at the Ridpath Hotel after getting married in Pasco. But I didn’t know they’d hiked at the Bowl & Pitcher while they were here. It was good to connect with her in that way too—to visit the Bowl & Pitcher on Mother’s Day.

She kept that smile until the very end.

—tjc