texified

    I arrived back in the “great Northwest” last Saturday (Mar 8), after having my original flight canceled on Friday due to a snow storm.  Yes, the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport had huge numbers of flights canceled because of a one inch snow fall…at least I think it was one inches.  The snow plows were out plowing off the snow which appeared deeper than one inch, but the tv news (which went into an incredible feeding frenzy over the weather) said it was one inch.

     When I was in Texas for the two weeks, the temperature ranged from 91 degrees (at my Father’s place–not official) to 28 (last Saturday, the day I flew home).  Sixty degree fluctuations are not at all uncommon there, and typically the temperature was in the 70′s for highs and 40′s for lows, although there were several frosts also.  The best thing about the weather though was the SUN!  People up here in WA are so bewildered when the sun comes out that children cry and hide their faces (you think I’m kidding??), and grown people grope blindly for their sun glasses, tears streaming from their squinting eyes (I have heard that more sun glasses are sold in this part of the country than anywhere else).

     My mother appears to be out of danger for the moment.  When I got to the hospital right after I arrived at DFW on Feb. 21, I found most of my family there.  Apparently the previous night when it was expected that my mother would pass on, all the family gatherered about, the children, grandchildren, great grandchildren…all watching and praying for my mother.  In the middle of the night my mother suddenly “woke” up and began her recovery from that point.   Some said it was the attention and prayers of all the family.  Either way, the doctor said that she had never seen anything like it.

      I stayed at my Dad’s new apartment, into which he moved last fall in order to be near my  mother.  He occasionally goes back to his lake house to check on things.    We stayed at the hospital each day and into the night when she was in the hospital, and visited her at least once a day once she got out.  My father visits her every day since he moved.  Before he got the apartment, he would have to drive the long distance from his house on Cedar Creek Lake, and then he would spend three or four nights at my sister’s house and visit my mother during those days.  Then he would drive back home for the remainder of the week, to attend church on Sunday, and keep up the place.

     We did go back to his lake house in order for him to vote last Tuesday in the Primaries.  This house once belonged to my mother’s parents.  I got to check on my house also which is next door to his.  Back in the seventies, my mother’s mother planted flowers all over the the yard about this house, and when I visit in the summer, I see the tall stands of Turks Cap which still grow in the shade of the oak trees about the house.  I haven’t been back  during this time of  year in many years, and I was so glad to see many Jonquils and Daffodils blooming along with blooming stands of Lily of the Valley.  The most amazing thing, however, was the Camellia bush underneath the kitchen window.  It was totally covered with crimson blossoms.  I had never seen it bloom and never knew it was there.  My grandmother absolutely loved flowers, and I know that she would have been overcome with delight to have seen this bush.   I have never even seen Camellia’s grow in this part of the country, but I guess it is cultivated in East Texas.   It’s amazing that over forty years later these plants are still flourishing with no care except for watering during the heat of the summer.