My Mother became an X-ray technician back in the forties. She loved it and talked about it often. She used to tell a story about how she x-rayed one of the Wright brothers. Yep, those airplane guys. She worked in a hospital at the time in Dayton, OH, and he was probably in his eighties then. She's a little fuzzy about that story these days, depending on what kind of day she is having.
She met my Dad when he had a wreck and had to have X-rays. They spent the next 50 years together. Literally, as they were married six weeks after they met. Mom quit to be a wife and Mother. There were six of us and she was a great seamstress. She made a lot of mine and my sister's clothes when we were little. She even made tons of barbie clothes. She could modify a pair of blue jeans into the coolest, widest bell bottoms on the block! They were awesome. She could knit and crochet sweaters, afghans, hats, you name it. When her first granddaughter was born, she knitted her and her Mother matching sweaters. Now she can do one basic crotchet project where she cuts a dishtowel in half and crochet's the ends so that they hang in your kitchen, on the stove, or fridge. They are cute, and it's a good thing I think so because at last count I had 46 of them.
If raising six kids wasn't enough she raised a litter of 6 Great Dane pups. The mother had died a few days after birth. Mom loves her animals. We have three dogs in the house now. She is in "dog heaven" and I hear it about 6 times a day. I'm used to that, though. :)
She was an artist, too. She loved to sketch and was always doodling. She did several canvas paintings through the years. She helped to teach my 5th grade art class at St, Francis of Assisi. She was always writing poetry, too. I think she probably always threw it away, but later in her life she started writing poetry for family members. She's long since stopped both drawing and doing much writing. Two yeaers ago I wanted her to draw a pond lily on a bench in my back yard. She looked directly at the picture I showed her and drew what looked like an Iris. In other words, nothing like what I showed her, but it was still okfor the bench, just very odd.
She sure doesn't deserve this disease, but nobody does. They say it's harder on the family than on the afflicted. That certainly is an understatement. Nobody seems to understand it. When you tell people, the first thing they ask is usually something along the lines of, "Have you found a good nursing home?" It may come to that some day, I can't promise it won't. This last visit she had with my brother was hard on him and he mentioned looking for a good ALF. But I want to try and do it as long as I can. She's my Mom. I don't consider myself any more of a person than my sibs for wanting to do it. I just feel it in my heart as something I need to do...and that I want to do. It just feels right.
She's got some really cool stories...when you hear them for the first time. She sometimes gets two or three completely different stories intertwined now and they morph into something new regularly. And she occassionally won't be able to finish one she starts. She is usually best with her stories in the mornings.
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