i adore the sabino. it is a glorious sight. bravo for your mom jesse.
I'm trying to decide if the 5-hour drive down from Flag is worth it.
Stupid me, of course it is. Time to get packin'.
I would say I was a teenager until about the age of 28. Considering how badly that screwed me up, I can only imagine the plight of someone stuck in that phase in their mid-30's.
Hmm. I never realized that Arizona king snakes looked that different from California ones. Ours had bright, shiny, sharp black-and-white bands (there's also a chocolate-and-creamy yellow subspecies that looks like it escaped from a Godiva truffle case).
I used to find these in the yard all the time when I was a little kid in the Eastern Sierra. They were friendly -- very easy-going, I've never seen one mad -- and we liked having them around because they keep the rattlesnakes down, both by eating them and by competing for the same food supply. (We liked roadrunners, which were also abundant, for the same reason.)
I hate snakes, but I love these guys. (The red-black-and-yellow-striped garters with sky blue bellies we had in the SF area were pretty cute as these things go, too -- except when they'd give birth to five dozen babies under the back porch.)
Jesse, your mom reminds me for all the world of my late m-i-l. She spent a lot of time birdwatching in Tuscon, and spent her elder years as a reading evangelist in LA inner-city schools. We have a priceless photo of her reading (very energetically!) to a class of kindergartners wearing a Cat In The Hat hat.
My mother moved to Tucson about 5 years ago, and I try to get out there every Spring. Sabino is beautiful - I was there the end of March this year, but could only see part of it because the road was washed out. And wasn't Miss Snotty I Live in Freezing Cold Maine surprised to freeze my ASS up on Mt Lemon!
I will definitely go back, and will keep an eye out for your mom.
I want to MOVE to the Desert Museum. I could live in the hummingbird house. I would be very quiet and would promise not to drink the nectar.
My mom is making the shift. Turned sixty-five this fall, after 11 years widowed. It's been tough on her that she was the first in her social group to lose her husband, since she wasn't ready to kick it with the 79 year old widows in the support group.
After 39 years serving abused and neglected children in the public system, she has developed a therapy practice that grew from one afternoon a week to more FT than she wants now that she has grandkids.
Recently she was recruited and she's going for it: 40 years after vigorous resistance to the war on VN, and 5 years after being socially isolated for her objections to widening the war on Iraq, she's checking in at the VA. Families and kids need a grandma to talk to, about how badly war hurts.
I can't wait to see how this turns out. She's going to Europe and living on-base. Should be interesting.
My mom has never stopped growing up. My dad, when he died at 54, showed all three of us what a dignified end looks like. Mom is showing us what a life that embraces change looks like. We're lucky kids.
Got a sister in law in her forties that is still a teenager...soem people never progress. No hard numbers but it seems to happen mroe with the babyboomers then with the generations before or after.
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